For some businesses I've worked with, SEO is their lifeblood. Risking potential revenue to "test" whether certain SEO strategies will yield positive results is not possible. As always, Google picks the winners and losers.
I do this for a living and I couldn't emphasise enough how much of a bad idea it is to build a business around SEO.
Is it a really important and potentially profitable thing to get right and do well at? Without any doubt the answer to that is yes in almost all cases.
Is it also at the same time where you should spend all of your marketing time and spend? No, not unless you want to spend the rest of your days worrying that the next major update will potentially wipe you out.
I find the advice of "don't rely too much on one channel" to be a bit insincere. Yes, that's good advice, but avoiding that trap, for many businesses, can be very hard. And when you're constantly trying to grow, increasing reliance on channels that provide growth is either difficult or stupid to avoid.
For channels where you don't have strong control, which are many -- SEO, social, etc. -- it's best to get as much overlap in channels you do control. So do things like convert organic and social traffic to emails as efficiently as possible. It's still going to hurt when you take hits, but you should be in a better position to rebound.
Also, when Genius got their spanking from Google last year, that advice was thrown around a lot. "Why are you so reliant on organic search?" For Genius, it makes 100% sense to be reliant on organic search. I search for lyrics a lot but almost never go to Genius directly. Why? It's not because they're bad, it's because it's easier to type in the Google bar "$song_title lyrics". And most of the time, Genius is right up there and that's who I click on because, in my opinion, they offer the best lyrics experience. And for people not familiar with Genius, they will always be most likely to become familiar with them from search results for "$song_title lyrics". It's a perfect fit.
Comments
For some businesses I've worked with, SEO is their lifeblood. Risking potential revenue to "test" whether certain SEO strategies will yield positive results is not possible. As always, Google picks the winners and losers.
I do this for a living and I couldn't emphasise enough how much of a bad idea it is to build a business around SEO.
Is it a really important and potentially profitable thing to get right and do well at? Without any doubt the answer to that is yes in almost all cases.
Is it also at the same time where you should spend all of your marketing time and spend? No, not unless you want to spend the rest of your days worrying that the next major update will potentially wipe you out.
I find the advice of "don't rely too much on one channel" to be a bit insincere. Yes, that's good advice, but avoiding that trap, for many businesses, can be very hard. And when you're constantly trying to grow, increasing reliance on channels that provide growth is either difficult or stupid to avoid.
For channels where you don't have strong control, which are many -- SEO, social, etc. -- it's best to get as much overlap in channels you do control. So do things like convert organic and social traffic to emails as efficiently as possible. It's still going to hurt when you take hits, but you should be in a better position to rebound.
Also, when Genius got their spanking from Google last year, that advice was thrown around a lot. "Why are you so reliant on organic search?" For Genius, it makes 100% sense to be reliant on organic search. I search for lyrics a lot but almost never go to Genius directly. Why? It's not because they're bad, it's because it's easier to type in the Google bar "$song_title lyrics". And most of the time, Genius is right up there and that's who I click on because, in my opinion, they offer the best lyrics experience. And for people not familiar with Genius, they will always be most likely to become familiar with them from search results for "$song_title lyrics". It's a perfect fit.