
SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone - mjfern
http://searchengineland.com/seo-remains-a-viable-marketing-strategy-for-anyone-67141
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dkokelley
I've seen a few commenters remarking that SEO is a zero-sum game. I hope to
refute this to some extent.

Yes, there is only so much room at the top for any given keyword like 'buy
Viagra'. Also, there is only so much room in the market for a product like
Viagra. (I'm using Viagra because of it's infamous relationship to search
engine spam.)

This is true of any market. You have market share, and you have your slice of
the pie. Most marketers, entrepreneurs, and economists have gotten past this
concept with the acceptance of creating value, or the 'growing pie'. But
somehow, the general sentiment towards SEO doesn't make the connection. After
all, if you're not in the top few rankings on the SERPs, you're not getting
clicks. It makes apparent sense that there is only room for 3-4 'winners' for
a given keyword.

The problem with this is that good SEO involves a traffic strategy that goes
beyond the single most obvious keyword. There is an unlimited supply of
keywords to choose from. Maybe 'buy Viagra' is too lofty a keyword to search
for, but 3 minutes of brainstorming could produce other avenues to attract
traffic. SEO isn't just the process of optimizing for a keyword, it's in
choosing the most relevant keywords to capture the market, including the
unrealized market.

 _If you are marketing your startup based on your competitive advantages or
differentiating factors, then there is room to differentiate and win with your
SEO. It's time for an example:_

Lets say there is only one type of car in the world. There is also a global
car market of say, 100 million cars annually. To the casual observer, any new
car maker would be competing in a zero-sum game. The only way to sell cars is
to take car sales away from the one type of car maker. If you're selling the
exact same car, then you have doomed your business. What about a different
car? How about a 2 door car. Maybe it gets better gas mileage. Now you have
your competitive advantage. Your marketing strategy is now to emphasize how
you are different. Some portion of the car market will want your different
car. They may even specifically look for a '2 door car', which your one
competitor doesn't offer. Imagine an SEO strategy for this new car. You would
probably pick keywords that emphasize your differentiating factors ('2 door
car', for example). Why would your competitor be optimizing for '2 door car'?
You've expanded the market for cars, and similarly have found an uncompetitive
set of keywords.

My point in all of this is to say that while from an extremely narrow point of
view, SEO could be considered a zero-sum game, but when you broaden your
perspective it becomes evident that it's no different than any marketing for a
business. In business it's possible to discover and meet new customers without
taking away your competitor's customers, and similarly you can optimize and
win on keywords without a ranking arms race with the other competitors.
Optimize based on your competitive advantages and differentiating factors and
you'll do well. If you don't have any such advantages, you've got bigger
problems than poor SEO.

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mkramlich
There are many things I've always disliked about SEO. One of them is the
aspect of it which makes it a zero-sum game with respect to a competitor who
is also doing SEO. I'd rather spend my time, energy and money on making my
product as good as possible, and then maximizing it's potential to spread
virally and through word of mouth. What Google giveth, Google can taketh away.
Quality wins in the end.

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jdp23
Yeah really. The responses here to Chris Dixon's article were pretty
negative.* Looks like others agree.

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2292901>

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trevelyan
The funny thing is that anyone can rebut Chris just by citing some examples of
companies that started post-2008 and got traction through SEO. But the only
companies cited in that entire thread are: OKCupid (2005), Mint（2006), Github
(2008) and Stack Overflow (2008). So right away we're down to two examples,
neither of which was founded in the last two years and both of which arguably
bootstrapped off large existing communities rather than organic web traffic.

Chris is right -- anyone doing a startup better have another way to acquire
users than focusing on SEO and organic traffic. The alternative is being black
hat and throwing user experience out the window, which is his point.

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a5seo
FeeFighters is doing a bang up job with link bait. They will start to reap the
rewards in 12-18 mos.

It seems like the people who dislike SEO either a) high a high burn rate and
can't wait 18 mos to get a payoff, or b) have investors who can't stand
putting money into a marketing activity with such high uncertainty.

Bottom line-- it's no different from PR. High initial expense, uncertain
payoff, but sometimes you get monsterous ROI.

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trevelyan
I like the company and agree that SEO has value. But do you really think "high
initial expense" and "uncertain payoff" are characteristics of good marketing
strategies for startups? I'd say it's exactly the opposite, and don't think
it's a good idea for startups to be doing PR either.

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jmotion
SEO is not a viable marketing strategy for everyone.

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c1sc0
Sure it is ... <http://i.imgur.com/WDCkI.png>

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vaksel
the problem is that everyone is focused on SEO, so new startups have a hard
time ranking for anything decent, since all their competitors that they are
trying to overthrow have spent decades link building.

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_pius
_new startups have a hard time ranking for anything decent, since all their
competitors that they are trying to overthrow have spent decades link
building._

It's a rare company indeed that's been link building on the Web since 1991.

