Image: Courtesy of Charlesc - Flickr
How many times have you heard the phrase “content is king”? Before we talk about this, I have a few questions.
- Is Joe Blogg who runs a local locksmith business a locksmith or a content creator?
- Should Joe Blogg invest his valuable time feeding the beast (Google) with “good content” or should he concentrate on what he knows best, being a locksmith, opening locks etc.?
- If Joe Blogg does not have the time or resources to produce “good content”, does that mean that he is a bad locksmith and therefore doesn’t deserve to get found on the first page of Google?
Think about it, what is the prerequisite of being a good locksmith or a mechanic or a painter decorator? Is the prerequisite being “good content” creators? I don’t think so.
Let’s face it, if you are a SEO consultant and you are reading this, you are probably fuming right now because you really do believe that “content is king” because good content is a link magnet and so on. If you are not a SEO consultant, you are probably wondering what “content is king” means. Here is what Wikipedia says about “content is king”:
“The phrase can be interpreted to mean that – without original and desirable content, or consideration for the rights and commercial interests of content creators – any media venture is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors.”
I know it is only a Wikipedia entry, but is your average local locksmith a “media venture”?
No it is not!
So why should it produce “good content” to operate as a locksmith? It shouldn’t have to, but thanks to Google’s market dominance and content focussed bias it is forced to do so. If Joe Bloggs, the honest & hard working locksmith does not create heaps of “good content” and then further “fresh content”, it will be lost in Google’s bottomless pit. On the contrary, his competitors, the click fraud savvy locksmiths who have got websites with ten thousand pages of content (thanks to some “Delhi-NCR” article spinners) and a blog that too is purely geared for Google (again thanks to some “Delhi-NCR” article spinners) appear on the first page and as a result are winning business all day long.
You are probably thinking that I might have a solution for this issue, I am sorry to disappoint you but I don’t have a solution. All I know is that Google is hurting a lot of small businesses, in fact killing many of them. These businesses have many other issues, dilemmas and challenges to deal with and this whole “content is king” is becoming a burden, a rather painstakingly frustrating burden.
Now I know that I have gone on and on about locksmiths, but bear in mind I am only using locksmiths to present my case. There are many other types of small local businesses that are facing hardship because of Google’s bias towards “good content”, exact match domains and so on.
Google is becoming a beast, a serial killer – the whole “don’t be evil” mantra is a smoke screen, in other words, it is nothing more than PR speak that can only fool the gullible. Google right now is fulfilling its obligation to its shareholders without fulfilling its obligations towards the business community especially small local businesses.
Something has to change, I don’t know what, how and where but what I do know is that local queries should be dealt with totally differently; “blended results” is not the answer.
Here is how Jeremy Stoppelman presented his case against Google in the latest senate antitrust hearing:
“Google is no longer in the business of sending people to the best sources of information on the web. It now hopes to be a destination site itself for one vertical market after another, including news, shopping, travel, and now, local business reviews. It would be one thing if these efforts were conducted on a level playing field, but the reality is they are not.”
“The experience in my industry is telling: Google forces review websites to provide their content for free to benefit Google’s own competing product – not consumers. Google then gives its own product preferential treatment in Google search results.”
“Google favors its own Google Local product in web search results, too. Rather than favouring them algorithmically, however, Google simply favors them as a matter of design.
For example, when users search for a barber in Madison, Wisconsin, Google will always present links to its own consumer review website in the most prominent position regardless of whether the algorithm has actually determined that it has the most relevant content. Put differently, it is impossible for any of Google’s competitors to be displayed as prominently as Google itself, even if Google’s own algorithm rates them higher. In some instances, Google simply excludes competitor results as a matter of design, not as a matter of objective, algorithmically-driven analysis.”
It is about time Google revised its strategy, they are becoming a monopoly, in fact a very dangerous one. Google wants a piece of every pie on the table, in fact every piece of every pie on the table. They are abusing their position as market leaders, be it by serving biased search results (see, screenshot below), “handing out” patents to other companies to create obstacles for their competitors so on and so forth.
Following screenshot demonstrates how Google takes over 50% of results in some cases.
Image courtesy of Aaron Wall
Going back to the whole “content is king” issue and just to clear things up – I hate the fact that local businesses have to create “good content” and “fresh content” to get found, but as it stands that is the only way to win on Google. I am hoping that we will hear more from local businesses in the current senate hearing instead of hearing from Silicon Valley firms such as NextTag or Yelp. The local businesses who don’t have a voice are the real victims, Google Places is a wreck, latest example being Closed, Says Google, but Shops’ Signs Say Open.
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Good article mate but I would I have my take on it that I really wanted to share…
I know Google mantra of ‘Don’t be evil’ and they usually say that users are their first priority but actually this is not the real case… like every other business on the internet they are also there for money and shareholders are their first priority…
Like take this whole internet marketing game at a side and think of a traditional marketing for a while… any business who need to increase sales have to invest in broachers, Radio Ads, freebies, bill boards and others…
I guess with the boom of internet a small business needs to shift its marketing budget from traditional ways to content creation… so producing good content is not really a big issue here…
But I do agree with the fact that a small business owner should be good at his business and not at content creation…
Unfortunately the fact is Google is bias and it is going to do anything to increase its revenue no matter if it hurts small business or user experience (to an extend…)
Agreed. But if you were a locksmith, what content would you produce? I mean come on, me and you don’t look for locksmiths with “interesting” content or do you go and say well this locksmith has really nice blog posts, I will get him to help me get in my house?
I think we should be honest and say that some businesses simply can not produce “quality/interesting content” at least not on regular basis. Take a local funeral director, what would they blog about? What pictures or videos should they share?
Thanks for this Yousaf, really thought provoking post. I’ve very recently started using my SEO experience to help re-do my mum’s exercise class site, and have been preaching about “content” to her, teaching her to blog etc. without really questioning it.
Fortunately she has the time and interest in doing this, it’s she only teaches mornings and evenings so has time to spare, and there’s always photos and news about special events she can publish.
The example of locksmiths and funeral directors is definitely one I hadn’t thought about. Coming from a social media background, I can also see how they would struggle on that front too (follow us for special deals on coffins?)
Hi Jon,
It is great to hear you are working your SEO magic on your mother’s website! Wish you all the best on that front.
Your special deals on coffins is certainly mouth watering, I mean who could miss deals of that nature!
There are many other niches where creating “quality content” just doesn’t make sense for example take your local garage. Sure they need a homepage, contact page, services page, about page and perhaps prices/rates but anything beyond that is just simply unwanted.
When was the last time you searched for a mechanic and decided to go with the one that has a 150 page website?
Google relies on content hence it is forcing businesses to create “great content” even when they don’t necessarily have to if it wasn’t for search rankings. Everything you would want to know about most local businesses can fit within a couple of pages and Google should be able to deal with it!
[...] just read a great post by Yousaf Sekander, a local SEO colleague based in the UK. He was speaking about the conundrum faced by many small [...]
Yousaf,
I don’t think that many small businesses even need to get into regular content creation through blogging or spinning out article after article. A static site with the typical home page, service pages (to target certain keyword variants on their typical services), an about us page and a contact page + maybe a testimonials page, is often all that is needed for the vast majority of local businesses. Unless you really want to and think you can commit to it, and do it well, just don’t bother going down the extra content generation path.
For less competitive niches that is more than enough, but the moment you are competing against some big rollers that’s when content creation etc. become mandatory-ish.
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Yousaf,
To play devils advocate for Google. Their business at its core is based on delivering people what they want. Google is Google because people use it, if they fail to meet the demands of their customers they will lose their business. With that in mind why should they be beholden to the local locksmith or anyone but their customers. If Google decides to have their own results populate the entire full page that is their privilege, no one forces anyone to use Google, and Google does not owe anyone to keep their website listed. Google is not built for small businesses, it is built for consumers, and their entire business is built on meeting that demand as best as possible, as such I think it’s not right to try and explain what their doing wrong.
I see your point with the article and agree, but isn’t it kind of like saying that national newspaper advertising is killing small business by pricing it out?
Regardless of wether or not Google dominates 50%, 80% or 100% of the top 10 results, there still is only 10 places to rank and there are loads more small business / tradesmen in most localities than that. The nature of Google rankings as a marketing tool (for small businesses) was always heading to a place where the market was too crowded and ultimately the cost involved too high to offer a return over more traditional forms of advertising.
The childhood of the SEO industry really spoiled a lot of markets by offering a cheap marketing opportunity for a lot of businesses – that gold rush was always going to end – does it really matter if Google ends it or shady business practices from website owners force legislation to intervene or simply the market becomes too competitive?
I’m no fan of Google these days and I really hate the way the try to dicate how websites “should” be. But the reality is that we (the SEO industry) gave Google this power through promotion of SEO, PPC and the use of Gmail, Adsense, Analytics and Google+ (haha – just kidding with the last one #seohumour).
In the same way that some businesses have over-relied on SEO as a revenue source over the years, the SEO industry has fallen into that one-trick-pony rut, when really we should be (and many do and most are moving this way) offering a broader range of strategic services rather than just pushing SEO hard.
I’ve worked in SEO for 10 years with agencies and freelance and it is sad to say that I think we’re getting to the point (actually, we’ve probably passed it) where in fact the advice to *some* clients should be that SEO isn’t a viable option for them and their budgets would be better spent on other channels.
Frankly, I think we should stop giving a toss about what Google thinks or does and start pushing a much broader, strategic service to clients.
Sometimes I think of SEOs as needy girlfriend / boyfriends that just can’t get over their @sshat of a partner. I think it might be time for us to move on – y’know sleep around a bit, perhaps have a fling with Bing, go out drinking with our app developer buddies and give those old school marketeers a call (the ones we’ve been largely ignoring the past decade)…I bet Google would reassess their cold shoulder, passive aggressive attitude if we all stopped showering them with attention!
Scott