First, I just want to preface this post by saying that I respect many of Seth Godin’s ideas. Seth, I read The Dip a while back and I credit your ideas for contributing to the mindset I needed to build my business. For real.
Ok… that being said, I have to disagree with the advice in this post. I’m just going to paste some quotes from the post and comment on them. Let’s begin.
There are two ways to use SEO to help your organization.
I get that Seth’s post focuses on two separate SEO strategies, but there are actually many ways that SEO can help your organization. I thought this distinction was worth mentioning, though it is not the focus of my post.
The most common way to use search engine optimization is to find a keyword (like “plumbing”) and do whatever you can to ‘own’ that word on Google. … There are 14 million matches for Plumber, and no, you won’t be #1 or #2. You lost. In fact, in just about every keyword worth owning, your chances are winning are small.
I used to accept SEO consulting clients, so I can speak about this from personal experience. While I was consulting, I would have never advised a plumber or any other local business to invest resources into ranking for such a general keyword such as “plumber”. It’s an ineffective SEO strategy for local small business because it won’t drive traffic that will convert into customers. Businesses which only service local areas, such as specific cities or counties, have no need to compete for the #1 spot for keywords like “plumber”, “accountant”, “restaurant”, etc..
I grew up in Deerfield IL, so I’ll use that town in my example. A Google search for “deerfield IL plumber” reveals that only 14 webpages are listed in the search results.
14. Not 14 million.
Any plumber in Deerfield can rank first page for that keyword without even trying. And for plumbers in Deerfield, this keyword is definitely worth “owning”.
The other way to use SEO is a bit more organic.
For clarity, I want to point out that the word “organic” is very common SEO terminology. However in Seth’s post, the word “organic” is not meant in the way typically defined by the SEO community. So this may be confusing to those who are not entrenched in SEO lingo.
Next is the SEO strategy that Seth Godin recommends in his post:
It involves owning a keyword that you already own.
So the SEO strategy recommended in Seth’s post is only targets prospects who have already heard of your company. And who are actively searching for your company by name. I find this to be an unfortunate undervaluing of the vast marketing potential of SEO tactics. This SEO strategy is essentially the marketing equivalent to barking “Polo!” after your prospect shouts “Marco!” standing five feet away from you in the pool.
Do a search on ShoeMoney in Google and you’ll find 340,000 matches. Wanna guess who’s first? {ShoeMoney.com} Why is this surprising? After all, he invented the word and he owns the domain.
I also want to mention that 98% of those other 340,000 webpages that rank for ShoeMoney also link directly to shoemoney.com. So a visitor searching for ShoeMoney is going find ShoeMoney.com no matter which search engine result page s/he clicks on. So basically, this SEO strategy is for attracting people who you probably couldn’t stop from finding your company anyway even if you tried to.
In my opinion, ranking for your unique domain name provides very little value unless your company already has big market share or offline brand recognition. Basically, this is not an effective SEO strategy for small business. In fact, it’s difficult for a company with a unique brand name to NOT rank for their own brand name. If your site has been live for a while and you’re not ranking for your unique brand name, you’re probably being profiled by Google for shady SEO tactics. (i.e. Google probably caught you hosting a huge link farm or something ridiculous like that).
When you start to {rank for your brand name}, it turns out that this helps you {rank for competitive keywords}. Your blog or site gets more organic traffic, which will organically raise your Google results for other words and phrases.
I haven’t personally observed any companies start to rank for highly competitive keywords simply and solely because they rank for their unique company brand name.
Here is Seth’s step-by-step SEO advice:
Step by step:
1. Make an incredible product, offer a remarkable service.
2. Associate a unique term or trademark with it. (Something that isn’t generic, and preferably, not a crowded search term already).
3. Assuming that you do #1 and #2, you’ll end up owning that word in the search engines. If you don’t, revisit the first two steps.
I actually agree with half of this step-by-step advice. Creating an incredible product or service is always an asset to your SEO efforts. But instead of naming your brand a completely unique word, read what SEO expert Aaron Wall said about SEO & domain branding. He recommends including in your brand name the main generic keyword that you targeting as well a unique branding word of phrase. (example: SEObook.com has “SEO” in the brand name. Including “SEO” in the brand name helps the site rank for “SEO” terms).
Most people will link to you site using your official site name or company name. If you include your targeted keyword (like plumber) in you’re domain name or company name, you’ll be much more likely to rank for variations of that high traffic term than if you create a completely unique name.
By including your targeted keyword in your brand name, you may eventually end up “owning” high traffic keywords in Google - keywords that are worth owning. And you’ll still end up ranking for your brand name. I completely agree with Seth Godin when he said, “and, yes, you can do both at the same time.”
