Well, I checked the SERPs this morning and once again PoolDawg is once again ranked #1 for some key terms that I frequently obsess over.  I turned off the personalized search option, checked the datacenters, and sure enough, we were still at the top of the list for “pool cues” as well as some other search terms that seem to be decent traffic and conversion drivers.  The question of course is whether or not this even matters anymore.

A few months ago, the almighty G changed the way they serve results, basing them on personalized search history rather than solely on the famous algorithm.  If you do a search and click on the link in the upper right hand corner that says “web history”, you’ll be taken to a page that looks like the screenshot below:

When you get there, you’ll notice that your search activity customization is defaulted to the “enabled” position.  What this means is that the search results you’re seeing have been rearranged to better mesh with your search patterns and history.  In other words, what I see may be very different than what you see when you search.

From an SEO standpoint, what this really means is that there is no true #1 anymore.  If you turn off the customization, you can see the unaffected results, but the average searcher wouldn’t ever do this.  The base algorithm results clearly still have a huge impact on what you see, but the days of truly being #1 seem to be over.

As an online marketing professional, I have very mixed feelings about this.  The SERPs have been an easy measuring stick for years.  On the other hand though, it frees me up to obsess over other things like how to implement guerrilla marketing tactics to get more exposure for a ceramic bulldog named Frank T. Dawg.

It never ceases to amaze how people think they can win you over through insults and gut punches.  The other day I got a call from someone who was running a pool tournament.  This is not surprising, as I get calls or emails at least a few times a week asking PoolDawg to come on as a sponsor of an event.  Sometimes we do, but in most cases we don’t.  Before I get into why we don’t though, I wanted to ramble a bit about this one person’s “pitch” to me.

The guy asks me to come on as a sponsor and then proceeds to tell me that I should because no one knows my brand.  I was polite and mentioned that we do quite a bit of promotion online, print and through TV as well as sponsor a pro player and the WPBA, but he insisted that he talked to a few guys down at his lodge and none of them knew who PoolDawg was.

This is the same sort of sales pitch I get from SEO boiler rooms on a regular basis.  They call me, tell me I don’t have any visibility in the SERPs and then say that they’ll get me to #1 in some term that usually is either low traffic or has little to do with our business model.  That one typically goes a little something like this:

SEO Boiler Room Guy: May I speak to the person in charge of marketing?
Me: That’s me. What can I do for you?
SEO Boiler Room Guy: I noticed you’re spending money on search advertisements, but I can’t seem to find you anywhere in the search results. How would you like to show up #1?
Me: I believe you’re mistaken. Of the 150 keywords we track regularly, we show up on page 1 for 110 of those terms.
SEO Boiler Room Guy: Well I searched on “Denver pool table manufacturers” and you weren’t anywhere to be found.
Me: That’s because we don’t manufacture pool tables and don’t have a showroom.  We are in the business of selling pool cues, cases and billiards equipment online.  Did you even bother to look at my website before calling me?
SEO Boiler Room Guy: Oh.
Me: Thank you for the call. Please take me off your list and have a nice day.

As sales pitches go, the “you should buy this because you suck” pitch is really not a very strong one.  If you want me to give you money,  tell me that I have a strong brand and you have a plan to make it stronger.  Don’t kick me in the crotch and then tell me how much you want me to come on as a title sponsor.  In fact, if your plan is to insult me and the company I work for, don’t even bother picking up the phone or writing the email.

Here’s the thing.  Everything I do from a marketing perspective is measured.  Everything has an ROI attached to it.  When I run an ad, I look at how much it costs me and how much business it drives me.  When I sponsor a player, I look at how much I spend on the sponsorship and how much I get back in sales.  If the ROI is strong, I keep doing it and look for similar opportunities.  If the ROI sucks, I put it in the loss column and move on.  I am never, ever going to spend money on a marketing campaign because someone tells me my brand is crap (which I’m very confident that it is not, by the way).

You want me to drop some cash on a sponsorship, tell me what I’m getting and how this sponsorship is going to make me money.  Give me a pitch worth listening to and I’ll consider it.  If your plan is to simply insult me though, feel free to move on to the next name on your call list.

A couple of years ago I posted my own riff on the stages of grief with The Five Stages of SEO.  Since I’m still trying to find my voice a bit with this blog (and I’m feeling both nostalgic and lazy today), I decided to repurpose this concept under the guise of “reflection”.

First, let’s take another look at the Five Stages:

The Five Stages of SEO

Denial – “No, my SERPs couldn’t be that bad! There’s got to be a quick fix to get us to #1″. We’ve all been there. It’s the most important term (in the eyes of you and/or your boss) and your site isn’t anywhere to be found. You’ve heard about some “quick fix” solutions and you put them into action, only to find that your quick fixes didn’t really help at all. This leads to…

Anger – “I changed my title tags and doused pages with keywords and we’re still not ranking on Google! What gives??” Anger is bound to happen. After all, you just read an article about SEO and applied their strategies so why shouldn’t you expect to be #1? After the steam has stopped coming out of your ears and nostrils, you then start…

Bargaining – “Who do you know at Google? Is there any way we can buy a top ranking? There’s got to be some way to work with them… maybe if we spend more money advertising?” Don’t worry, this is a natural part of the process. Of course, as we all know, there is no bargaining with Google. Google is the mighty White Whale and we are all little Ahab’s fighting against something that simply does not care.  Either they like your site or they don’t, which leads to…

Depression – “This is hopeless. I tried all the tricks from that article and nothing is working. Woe is me and my poor, unloved site.” Again, this is a natural feeling. You tried a few things, you even asked Google to take your money in exchange for a good ranking and you’ve found nothing but dead ends. Your site still isn’t on page 1, but fear not for there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it isn’t the proverbial train coming to squish you. Once you realize this, it leads to…

Acceptance- “Well, all the shortcuts didn’t work and we couldn’t buy a #1 ranking, so I guess we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way.” This is when you roll up your sleeves, start producing lots of good content and work on building links.

Once you accept the fact that there are no shortcuts to SEO, that is when you’ll start to see your site gain some traction. Search engines love good content and your visitors might dig it too. Build the good content and people will find it. If it’s really good, people will link to it. The more you become an authority, the more love Google and the other search engines will show.

Since the original writing of this concept, our natural traffic that we get from Google on a monthly basis has more than doubled.  I don’t state this to brag, but rather to make a point about not letting the tail wag the dog.  There are always going to be shortcuts when it comes to SEO.  Sometimes, for a short while anyway, those shortcuts will work.  What I’m saying is that it isn’t necessary to take shortcuts in order to improve your SERPs and grow your overall traffic.

I take a very holistic approach to SEO – only write content that reads well for your end users.  Does that mean I don’t focus on keywords?  I absolutely focus on keywords.  We are extremely strategic with our copywriting.  In the end though, I try to make sure that what we’re offering to the end user is informative and entertaining first.  After all, if your writing sucks it doesn’t matter how much extra traffic you get.  In the end, customers will leave because your copy isn’t engaging them.

Of course I’ll still obsess over certain keywords.  I can’t help it.  I still check more often than I should to see if we’re #1 for pool cues (we keep flipping between #1 and 2 with our very respected and worthy adversary Ozone) and when we’ve fallen out of the top spot, I still get upset, but in the end I remind myself that 95% of our Google search traffic comes from searches other than pool cues and that over focusing on one phrase can have some seriously bad long term effects.