Right now (as of June 2) there is a conversation ongoing at Webmaster World about the declining value of a #1 organic search ranking.  The argument is that the #1 position doesn’t attract as much traffic as it used to (on Google in particular) because of the way that Google has placed ads and added ad sitelinks, etc… all around the top of the page.  Not surprisingly there is much bellyaching by the SEO community many of whom have staked their pitch to clients on the claim that 75% of people skip over the ads and go straight to organic.

I have been labeled a PPC guy before, but that’s not quite accurate.  I’m just lazy and cautious.  I go for the most income for the least amount of effort and risk.  If that result can be achieved through organic listings, so be it.  However, that’s rarely the case in more competitive spaces.  And while dramatic algorithm shifts are less likely today than they were a few years ago, I prefer not to put myself and the expense of my time at risk.

Besides, if you really think about it, does Google REALLY want you to get a #1 ranking?  Sure, there’s the whole ‘user experience’ spiel from them and it’s true, to a certain extent.  If they delivered total junk results, they’d go the way of Alta Vista, Lycos, Alltheweb, etc….  But they do walk a fine line with wanting to deliver quality results organically (where they make no money from the clicks) versus driving the visitor to the paid listings.  Their stock share price doesn’t rise and fall by organic click-thrus.  Of COURSE Google wants people to click on the ads and not the organic.  But can they really be considered ads anymore?

Google has dealt with this tightrope walk by implementing the Quality Score on paid search, an algorithm that works similar to the organic algorithm.  The most relevant ads/landing pages show higher.  There are other benefits as well, like lower average cost per click.  Quality Score has been around for a couple of years and Google is always improving/refining.   Through this Quality Score refinement Google is making the paid listings just as, if not more, relevant as the organic listings.

I think what Google is doing is making the organic results supplementary to the paid listings with no decline in the sacred ‘user experience’.

Does this make me sound like a PPC ‘homer’?  I prefer to think of it as walking with the wind at my back instead of in my face.

If you use Google Analytics to track your site’s performance, there’s a little graphical display pie chart called Traffic Sources Overview that gives a breakdown of where your site’s traffic is coming from. I use it to provide an indicator of where I need to focus my traffic generation energy.

There are three sources:
1. Direct Traffic
2. Referring Sites
3. Search Engines

You know how all those financial wizards tell you that you need to diversify your investments? It’s the same concept here. Most people will see search engines as the majority of the pie, and that can be a bit dangerous. If you see search engines representing more than 75% of your traffic, you’re completely vulnerable to shifts in ranking algorithms. Remember the Florida update back in late ’03? That algorithm change ruined the holidays for many that were totally dependent upon natural rankings.

The lesson learned? Don’t let search engine traffic represent too much of your overall traffic mix. Publicize your site through articles, links, press releases, social media. Heck, take your publicity offline and find ways to raise awareness to your site through other media.

And here’s the funny little side effect… as traffic increases through referring sites and direct traffic, it becomes a real battle to keep the search engine traffic down. Remember, search engines (Google in particular) are completely devoted to giving a good user experience and if they see that you’re getting so much traffic from other sources…. well, they want in on that.

A few posts ago, I said I’d get a bit more in depth about my feelings about Google. Basically it comes down to this: I don’t understand why everybody is walking on eggshells when it comes to dealing with Google.

Google is nothing but a tool. So many SEO folks are like, “Oh my God. I don’t want to do anything that would make Google not want to be my friend! Without their friendship, I’d just DIE!”

Hey, I get it. A top ranking in Google for a term that gets a lot of searches is really great. But really people, you give them too much credit! If you can build a site that is sustainable from other sources besides Google, they have no choice but to come begging! It’s their whole business. Without listing the most credible sources of information at the top, they’d just end up another AltaVista. Despite all their genius and algorithms, Google can’t think for themselves. They need to look to others to figure out who to like.

Didn’t anyone ever teach you that playing hard to get is a great way to attract someone?

And just like playing hard to get with the object of your desire, you weren’t REALLY making yourself impossible to get. You do things that make yourself more attractive. Look at this blog. It’s not an SEO piece of art, but I did do the fundamentals. But I spend more effort getting attention from other sources than I do worrying about optimization.

A lot of people tell you that parked domains can’t get any natural rankings in search engines. Google says they won’t rank parked domains in an effort to keep the index clean. Companies like Parked.com have set up templates that allow you to post content with the idea that maybe it will look like a developed site instead of just PPC ads.

And then there’s this:

I just searched for food critics on Google and what I see is that thefoodcritics.com holds the #4 position (5 if you count the double listing) out of 424,000 possibilities.

By looking at it, you immediately know it’s parked and most domainers will immediately recognize it as belong to a certain Mr. F. Schilling.

One thing that drives me crazy about industry blogs is that there are so many people saying the exact same thing over and over again.  You can usually find one person will post something of interest and then 100 or so other people who subscribe to that original blog will post pretty much the same thing.  Why??? Why do you do this?  If you follow certain industries, then you have a bunch of industry blogs in your reader.  Inevitably you end up with 101 posts about 1 thing.  It’s just so circular because the people that read the blog with the unoriginal post and just wrote about it on their blog just also saw it on all the other blogs.

So, industry bloggy blogger guy, if you get the urge to regurge what you’ve read on someone else’s industry blog thinking you’re going to enlighten new people and get credit for being such an original thinker…. just stop.

I try to prevent topic overlap with my blogroll to spare people.  If I catch it happening, I merely pull out the source that seems to be the follower.  My roll changes fairly regularly as I move up the chain to credible forward thinkers.

I try not repost stuff that you can just as easily read somewhere else.  It may result in me not following the ‘post every day’ mantra, but what I do post I try to make original.

Sorry, guess I’m still just grumpy about the Pats.

Having been involved in internet marketing since 1997, I’ve traveled far and wide online and participated in many different communities and forums as I learn different facets of the trade. There’s always one general common theme: the other guy is cheating!

On search engine forums you read a lot about how Yahoo and Google (mostly Yahoo) are cheating advertisers out of their PPC dollars by allowing rampant click fraud through their distribution network.

On domainer boards, you can always find people challenging the parking companies because they’re either having their accounts terminated or the parking company is fudging the numbers and keeping an ever-growing share for themselves. Or it’s Yahoo and Google who are keeping the share.

On affiliate marketing focused discussion boards you can find lots of posts about how various affiliate programs screw affiliates paying paltry commissions or by letting them run up huge commissions and then terminating the account right before it’s time to pay the affiliate but also divulging some of the shady methods in which they go about generating traffic and making sales which means the affiliate program managers need to pay small commissions to hedge against all the junk that comes their way.

Put it all together and what do you get? A general state of distrust. It’s the OTHER guy that’s always doing the cheating! Kind of sad, really. Makes the internet look sleazy and unprofessional. But, when you have such a low barrier to entry, you attract all types.

Today I want to continue what I started into yesterday. That is, the pros and cons of domain parking and domain development.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the main advantages of parking is that you really don’t have to do much at all. If it gets type-in traffic, the money pretty much happens. Sure, there might be some optimization of keywords, but it’s a pretty simple process. For those lucky few that own those really powerful domains, this works just fine.

For the rest of us that have domains that are good but not great, development may be a better option.

When you park a domain and depend solely upon type-in traffic, you’re essentially limiting the ways that somebody gets to your site. I call this the Keyhole Effect. That one way, direct navigation, is the only way you’re going to see any traffic. And it’s only that one little phrase. Typo on that one phrase? That’s a lost visitor.

If you DEVELOP that domain, you unlock the doors of multiple traffic points. Search, link referrals, longtail, personal referrals, etc…

One reason to park is that you get that relationship with Google and Yahoo for high value clicks. If you load in Adsense or YPN, those are clicks that tend to be lower value because a lot of advertisers either lower their bids or opt out of that network entirely. As an advertiser, it’s certainly what I’ve done as my ROI through those channels are much lower.

As a domain owner/publisher I want to monetize my traffic as easily as possible. I prefer PPC because all I have to do is deliver the traffic. The visitor from my site clicks the link and is gone. I’ve done my job, now pay me. If I’m monetizing through some sort of inquiry/lead/purchase based affiliate program, I have to rely on the program manager to effectively convert the traffic I send them. I lose enough sleep over traffic as it is. I don’t really want to be worried on downstream conversions that I’m not involved with.

So, what I’m getting at is that you should develop if you think you can get traffic from from those other sources. If you’re only going to a half-a$$ed development don’t plan on getting any natural search rankings, any quality directory listings and friendly or linking referrals. You will be giving up the cleanest and easiest monetization. But if you do a good development job, you will easily surpass what you would have made from just parking.