Search engines mainly Google have become a market driven tool which lead us to question their future role in the digital world. Search engines’ mantra is to highlight “integrity,” “relevance” and “objectivity”. Today Google,Bing,Yahoo, Baidu and Yandex are five companies controlling most of the Internet’s information flow in five continents. Although their intentions are good, but they are filed with political and commercial strategies of their own which affect negatively organic search results.
Many Internet users have lost their trust in Google due to various issues such as: being close to monopoly, inability to fix negative SEO and privacy issues.
Although we continue to have a largely optimistic outlook on search engines mainly Google, however we have noticed its heavy commercialism. Moreover, nonprofit organizations and educational institutions cannot rely on Google’s organic search results. Because the first results are occupied by commercial search marketing. The relevant content is buried under commercial content in Google search engine. Google’s contractors and alliances who promote Google’s search engine and products have occupied the very first search results. Google can add or remove a website manually from their search engine. As users habitually turn to search engines to find data and information, yet the right and relevant content is buried under a commercial environment in search engines. This has created an increased difficulty to locate content that is not commercial.
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Google’s political strategy has created a trust issue among their competitors, politicians and users. We have been observing the rise of uniformity in search engine industry that had been teetering dangerously close to monopoly.
Google search engine has become a huge cluster of data which are manipulated by their contractors and allies. The rise of negative SEO corrupted the search query. Companies apply black hat and unethical strategies such as link injection, browser Trojans and so on in order to manipulate Google search engine.
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Google search engine’s greatest challenge is negative SEO. Businesses outrank each others’ websites by creating loads of links in order to take their place in search results.
This is the reason that lately John Muler , one of Google’s employees created a couple of webmaster hangouts and claim that link building is worthless and not effective. Why? Because they are applying this false strategy about link building not being effective in order to weaken the power of negative SEO. They are barking at the wrong tree. By spreading words such as ineffectiveness of SEO link building strategy, they cannot decrease negative SEO issue. Their disavow links tool was created for this reason which became an ineffective tool for website owners.
Link building is very much different from link farming which Google strongly discouraged a few years ago in 2003 and even won a case against “the SearchKing” company. Link building is one of the legitimate processes of search engine optimization. Without link building a website cannot and will not appear online. I have been testing it in different ways and believe businesses must not stop using this strategy.
Why do companies need link building SEO?
All these social media, video promotion, PR and link popularity are connected to link building SEO. Although link building alone is not effective, however taking out this important process will cripple both a website’s visibility and a search engine. A website without link building will have no online presence.
Why Google is trying to disapprove these activities? Because they cannot find a solution for negative SEO.
Some of Googlers created rumors on forums and social media that “SEO is dead” and not effective. “Link building is wrong”. They have implemented various algorithms in order to make Google search engine user friendly, but the result became something else.
As a seasoned search engine programmer and optimizer, I do believe there is a political reason behind all these nonsense.
This naive approach against seo link building have come from inexperienced and young employees at Google who think they would make their search engine better and increase Google’s quality if they spread such rumors online. In contrast these actions have created a distrust environment against them.
Why does negative SEO exist? Because Google itself is the one to blame. When they prioritize their own and contractors’ content on their first search results, how do they expect people trust them? They created a distrust environment among European countries in Europe which became a huge scandal.
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Search engines’ market share
Many changes have happened in the realm of search engines. Search engines market shares in 2015 were as follows: Google market share 88.1% compare to October 2014, got 0.72% reduction in 2015. Yahoo 4.1% compared to October 2014, got 1.81% increase in market share. Bing 4.53% compared to October 2014, has 0.10% increase in market share. Baidu 0.63% increased market share compared to 2014. It’s market share went up 0.11%. Finally Yandex company’s market share was 59,7%.
In April 2016, 4.48 percent of worldwide internet users searched the web with online search engine Bing. During the same month, Chinese search engine Baidu had a market share of 0.63 percent.
Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1998, the worldwide market share of all search engines has been rather lopsided. Google has dominated the search engine market, maintaining an 89.44 percent market share as of the first quarter of 2016. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2015 with roughly 74.54 billion U.S. dollars.
The total number of search engine users in the United States was estimated to be roughly 213.6 million in 2014 and is expected to reach 236.4 million in 2019. During the same period, the number of U.S. mobile search users is projected to increase to almost 216 million.
Let ‘s have an overview on the importance of SEO for your business.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial online marketing technique. It helps a business to get their web site to appear in search engine result pages (SERPs) for keywords that are relevant to their business.
Business owners should implement SEO link building, social media marketing and video promotion in their organic search engine optimization campaign. Search engine marketing if it is done right, will increase sales.
How can you find the right expert?
Each project is different and the online world is filled with search engine optimization companies. How can you choose the right company? Should you rely on a company’s reviews? Or should you contact their customers? You should look at the potential SEO Company’s website and their portfolio. Give them a call and discuss your situation and goals. Take note of their professional nature, their history, case studies and vision for your online presence. Pay attention to their replies. Even the busiest companies should be quick in replying a presale inquiry. Customer service is the most important component in an online business. Check out their blogs and social media channels. A Good seo expert always gives you the right personal recommendation for your business. You should ask the right questions from them in order to get the right answer. If the company gives you a cliché reply or do not apply an in-depth analysis and marketing plan, they may not be a suitable company for you. You are the only one who can judge a SEO company or an SEO expert.
How much money should you invest in your digital marketing business?
Before answering I would like to ask you how much does your product or service cost per unit? You have to calculate how much you should invest in marketing in order to gain profit. A quality SEO campaign is not cheap. It requires manual processes, analysis, keyword matrix research and much more. A quality keyword matrix is not free either. Those free keyword research which some companies advertise are their strategy to capture leads. They are not real keyword matrix.
Cheap SEO is expensive. Once a prospect asked me to work on his SEO campaign, after a conversation and an overview plan for his campaign, I gave him the list of pricing along with marketing plan for their business. He said: “it’s expensive” so he found another company, three months later he came back to me and asked for my help. I planned a digital marketing strategy for his eCommerce and sales started purring in within a short amount of time. He not only got back his money which was wasted by hiring another SEO company but also he started seeing profit for his online shop.
Hiring a cheap SEO company will cost you dearly. After 2012 when Google changed their algorithm completely , many SEO businesses became wiser in applying lucrative strategies in order to keep their own and clients’ ranking stable and safe from getting hit by algorithm updates. It all depends on how you approach them and what questions you ask. We all are adults and have the ability of choosing who is the right company and who is a snake oil salesman. Choose your SEO Company wisely.
What should you do if you operate alone? You should apply link building seo and social media marketing strategies and have at least three experts by your side in order to succeed in the business: a sales expert, an SEO and search marketing expert and a social media expert.
Search engines have been teetering in many years in order to milk more revenue from owned and operated properties, your goal as a small business owner should be focusing on the core value of your business operation.
In conclusion, although Google has been a dominative search engine in the last decade, however smaller companies have begun to gain a bit of the market share away from Google across different platforms just as i predicted about the power of small businesses and seo trend.
Focus on making a difference and add value. Connect with interesting people who are not afraid of change. No one make something for everyone, so focus on targeting the right audience and add value. If you are not making sales, then you are not doing it right.
Sometimes in business we have to embrace uncertainty and do it anyway. Because without taking the risk,we have a little chance to succeed.
Need help? Let’s hear it.