Usability guru Jakob Nielsen calls search engines “leeches” and ponders how much of the value of online content has been plundered by the likes of Google and Yahoo; he misses a basic concept about search engines and SEM, and the traffic they deliver.
Nielsen’s post claims the need for “liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative.” Search delivers visitors to sites, thus serving users of search, so why should sites change the relationship?
Nielsen acknowledges the traffic-for-indexing relationship has existed, but it is a changing relationship. “Paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value,” he writes. As sites optimize to improve their conversion rates, other sites have to make equivalent improvements to keep pace.
They then pay more to maintain their previous placement in paid search, while the search engines sit back and collect the revenue. Nielsen makes valid points, and goes on to discuss other methods of finding and retaining customers, but there’s a simple concept being missed.
None of those other methods works as well as search marketing today. Nielsen’s stated goal is to make users come back. They can’t come back unless they find a site initially. Thus, the burgeoning market for SEO and SEM exists and grows.
Regardless of how anyone feels about the lucrative profitability of search advertising, or how it compels businesses to participate in that market or lose potential customers, search marketing has become the reality of the Internet as it is today.
Tomorrow, who knows? Right now it’s an expense few high-performing sites can afford to drop, no matter how high the price goes for a pay-per-click bid. Perhaps as more site networks emerge, with dedicated advertising available for purchase within the network or even on a particular swath of niche sites, publishers can lessen their search dependency.
Today, probably not.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
