Affiliate Musketeer

There’s been a lot of flapping lately.  If you can imagine the world of google in a hierarchical form, with google at the very top, then 4 or 5 Super Gurus on the tier below, then 10 times as many guru wannabes on the tier below and then another tier of guru wannabe wanabees below that and so on and so on until you get to the real tail end of the wannabe chart – round about where I am.  Ok, so if one of the top Gurus starts shitting his pants because the future of google lies not in the hands of any of their SEO technical skills but on factors way beyond their control such as IP address, geographical region, search history and other third party derived information, the effect is that all of the wannabe wannabe wannabes on the lower tiers of SEODOM start shitting their pants too, like a bad game of Chinese Whispers 2.0.

Take this one, for instance…

I came across a blog post today talking about how google was dead, or rather, how SEO just went all tits up.  I found myself drawn in as it was an interesting read in itself but when I got to the end I couldn’t help but feel like this was the arse end of a bad ripple from somewhere up at Tier 2 (a wannabe guru) which had filtered down and now those at the very bottom were re-writing the same article they had read up at Tier 2. Its like a panic effect where some important points get lost in translation because we’re all so used to focusing on SEO and rankings and lots of the scrapers at the bottom of the line just reword what was already written above without actually thinking about what they’re writing because they’re so focused on popping out 2 posts a day to meet the next target and gurus are gospels so what they say must be right. I don’t know, you get all them cool chess pieces at the back and then them little shitty ones at the front that do all the shitty work..it was a bit like that.

Anyway, the problem with this tradition though, is that we’ve all gone mad and lost sight of what google has always been about.  Providing relevant content to its users.

And this is precisely the reason why I don’t think google has gone tits up or, indeed, will ever go tits up (to the point of no return at least).  At the end of the day, google makes money by providing as accurate a set of results as possible, so even though the chance of localising campaigns and geotargeting SERPS is practically set in stone for our future, we should not look at this with disdain or within an armageddonesque context. It is not the end of SEO!

How Can I Say This, I’m Not Bruce Willis!

Well, if google’s most singular goal in life (lets naively assume they’re not out just for our money just for a second and just for the sake of this article) is to deliver accurate, representative, relevant content, then surely that content spans beyond geotargeting and localisation?  For example, if you have a product that gets shipped nationwide and you build a worthy, reliable, authoritative website that distributes goods and services nationwide and you optimise your site with this in mind and market it and build a big, respected brand around it, then surely google cannot ignore it? My mind wanders here to play.com, amazon.com, ebay.com…its not possible that google will filter out these websites because of geographical restraints because they have such a huge, global presence therefore my thought process goes along to think that if you are already optimising your site to be the ‘biggest in its niche’ then surely your 250 page website about chinese dwarf hamsters will be just as relevant to Dr Frank in Transylvania as it would be for the Church of Stathamology in LA?

The important factor here being the nature of the data sought, which is, let’s just remind ourselves and the Gurus of SEODOM, what search is all about.  If its information, then geographical restraints won’t matter.  If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a specific product then surely local results are a good thing?   When I search for a beauty therapist to wax my ass crack I don’t want to be presented with Ass Waxers from brunei when I live in England just because theyve got a million links and some clever way of making every page relevant to my search no matter whether I’m looking for nipple clamps or neoprene gyroscopes, nor even Ass Waxers in london if I live in Yorkshire…but if I am presented with Ass Waxers in Yorkshire…and the one that was SEO’d the best is at the top…then its a win/win, right?

For commercial products/services, the well SEO’d site will still outranks its counterparts in its region because that is the nature of search, and for information, the well written, super king authority site will still outrank localised information sites if they are more relevant to the content the user is looking for.

It doesn’t matter how it gets interpreted by the Super Gurus on Tier 1 or the wannabe wannabe wannabe wannabes at the very bottom of the pile (like me), google is just doing us all a favour and if you have a website that sells local services/products (and lets face it a good 75% of small businesses do), then you’re in a stronger position for the future than you’ve ever been.  For those that sell nationally, just remember the golden rule:

Solve The User’s Problem First, Then Sell Your Products Later and You’ll be Alright.