It wasn’t that long ago when a small website, run from a spare room, could take a foothold in natural search results. But have things changed? As more big brands start to grasp SEO the day of the one man website may be numbered.
For years big brands have not fully utilised the assets they have in a strategic sense to gain advantage in natural search results. They relied on brand terms to drive traffic. As the economy squeezes every last drop from their marketing budgets so they are now seriously looking at the long term efficiencies SEO has to offer.
They now build sites that get indexed, optimise their content to be relevant for key terms across the user journey and syndicate content to gain precious authority from inbound links. They are learning how universal search can open the door to traffic from images, video, maps, blogs and news. They have rallied around social networks to build followers who talk about them gently nudging sentiment in their favour while increasing their share of voice.
The sleeping giant is awake and its optimising the hell out of its website.
The resources these companies can move to influence rankings is way beyond the spare room start-up. If they apply the right techniques on an ongoing basis they could leverage economies of scale that could change the face of search. Many have seen the light, boardrooms now know what SEO stands for and like the idea of ‘free’ traffic.
The realm of search is changing, however, the keeper of the keys (Google) likes to keep the landscape fluid, Google likes the PPC income, it may change the rules more frequently to keep brands investment in SEO high to try and guard against a drop in income. Last year saw over 400 changes to the algorithm, how many this year? And next year?
The key capability big brands need is agility, the ability to keep moving as the rules of the game change. Natural search marketing is like trying to make a boat out of a car and just when you have you realise you need to build a train out of a boat.