SEO is just another form of marketing. It works when it’s done right… like any form of marketing and unlike billboard or tv advertising, it’s much more transparent and accountable.

Are there dodgy ways of gaming the search engines. Sure. Just like there are dodgy ways of misleading customers offline. Ultimately, if you produce something that results in a bad customer experience you’ll pay.

With regards to this post, I’d challenge the following assertions:

1) [SEO is] A Continual Investment with No Guarantees

That’s a criticism you could level at any marketing effort. Not selling is not an option for most people, so as SEO is just another form of marketing, it shouldn’t be singled out in this respect. In fact, it’s much more accountable than other forms of marketing when it’s done right (Hello brand marketers…!)

2) You’re manipulating the system

Yes. And if by manipulating the system you mean we’re identifying what customers are searching for and then trying to present them with relevant information that addresses their concerns, then you bet that’s what we’re doing. And our clients who are meeting the customers’ needs and making a decent living growing their business are loving every minute of it.

3) It [SEO] can damage the user experience

Yes, if it’s done poorly. Why would you not want a great user experience that still gets indexed by search engines? When SEO is done right, you get a fantastic user experience. Not only does the visitor get what they are searching for, but they get it quickly with no bells and whistles. That’s SEO done right. The example sited in the post is outdated and no serious SEO practitioner would see it as a benefit.

4) “Website owners seem obsessed with being ‘number one’ on Google. However, it is not a particularly effective method of marketing.”

Seriously? You have to be joking, right? In Australia, Google is the search engine of choice. It’s used by 90% of Australians searching online. Let me hammer this point home, 9 out of 10 Australians are using Google to find what they are looking for on the Web.

If you have a business and you are not visible for the product s or services you offer on Google, you are giving this business away to your competitors… and on behalf of my clients I would simply say: ‘Thank You! Thank you for not believing in SEO and letting us make piles and piles of money in this channel! We’re eternally grateful and would encourage you to stay ignorant on the subject. It only makes our job easier! God Bless you Man!”

5) I would invest in making your site better for users and encouraging them to recommend it through social networks and linking.

Linking and getting users to your site via other web entities… Hmmm… What would I call that? Ah yes… That’s what known as link building and social media optimisation and it’s an integral part of any SEO strategy. Increased traffic via social websites only boosts your credibility and visibility… and referrals via links are massively helpful to your visibility on search engines. Like it or not, when you’re doing this, you’re practicing SEO to some degree – and your clients will be all the better for it!

Good on ya matey!

For those around who still care about the other search engines, Microsoft launched their highly anticipated new search engine called Bing. Touted as the Decision Engine, Microsoft has high hopes for Bing in challenging the Google juggernaut from increasing its market share.

At first glance, Bing provides offers up a simple search interface (a lot like Google). The search results display is clean (like Google) and of course the name is catchy (much like Google).

But what about relevancy?

Like most things in life, if you can’t give people what they want, they’ll go elsewhere or at the very least stay where they are.

From the few hundred searches we’ve done so far, the relevancy appears to be slightly better than the old Live results. However, Bing, like Live, places a lot of weight on the domain name, especially for generic terms. The end result: You get a lot more websites like www.car-rental-sydney.com showing up for queries like ‘Sydney car hire’ (see the second organic listing in the example below). On other words, many websites with keyword optimised URLs gain more awareness than they deserve, largely based on the domain name.

Can Bing win market share from Google?

With Google’s growing market dominance there are plenty of people who’d like to see a more equitable split between Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, especially in Australia where we have more than enough de facto monopolies. More competition would be a win for all of us, even Google as it would help keep them honest and their egos from getting too big.

Unfortunately, Bing’s results are not ground breaking enough to supplant Google. In fact, I’d argue Microsoft still has a lot of work to do improve relevancy. We found a number of irrelevant results that left us scratching our heads.

A search in Australia for ‘amplify’ returns old pages no longer live on our site! Clearly an updated index is badly needed. Searches on ‘health insurance’ and ‘travel’ in Australia returns positively bizarre results. Try it for yourself and see how Bing’s results compare to Google’s. Like us you’ll likely agree Microsoft has a lot of work on its plate to challenge Google.

Even if Bing improves the relevancy of their search results though, one has to wonder whether it will be enough to make people switch. We are, after all, creatures of habit. If it’s not broken, there’s very little chance Bing will make much of a dent, even with the expected marketing weight of Microsoft behind it.

What does Bing mean for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

The short answer is not much… at least not today. While, I’m certain the Microsoft engineers will be tweaking the algorithm to improve relevancy over the coming weeks, the pessimist in me doesn’t believe it will be much help. Google isn’t broken and unless you have something better – and better out of the gate when you’ve got max visibility –  it’s just not going to be enough to make us Bing.

However, if Bing does manage to wrestle some of Google’s search market share away, the entire search marketing industry may have to invent a new service called Decision Engine Optimisation (DEO)! We can only hope…