Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Do it while the internet is still cheap!

Bruce Clay, Internet Marketing Guru and Founder of Bruce Clay Inc. Talks to Virat Bahri of B&E on search engine OPTIMISATION (SEO) – and on how is it like working with Lindsay Lohan and CNN at the same time

B&E: When internet penetration in India is so low & companies find offline investments more lucrative, why should they invest in SEO at this jucnture?

Bruce Clay: If you believe that the web will be big in the future, and you know that you will be there eventually anyhow, by waiting, you are giving your competition an opportunity to become established. There’s still sufficient value today to justify doing it even at lower percentages. It really is the ‘claiming your turf’ advantage. Given that you are going to do it anyhow, waiting is only going to harm you. It gives your competition the opportunity. It isn’t right to give that up when the cost of going on the internet is generally less than the benefit of being on the web. I can’t imagine that there are many keywords that aren’t going to pay for themselves on the internet. You would want to take advantage of being there. SEO is the most cost effective process. There is pay per click, the ads that you run in Google and they are very expensive compared to the cost of SEO. The organic/SEO space gets 7 out of 8 clicks on Google, while the ads only get 1 out of 8. You are going to spend on ads anyway, so why not start early and get onto the free listings. My recommendation is, there is no good reason not to, unless you simply cannot afford it.

B&E: Are Indian search engine user habits dramatically different compared to other markets you have worked in?

Bruce Clay: No. There may be a crossover at a language level, based on what people are looking for. But Google supports language, so you should do ok. The real issue I think is that users in every country have learnt to be very very targeted. They have learnt to search for more words rather than fewer words. They search for 3 words and not one word 58% of the time. When people do that, they get results that are more appropriate and targeted to that particular query. That is universal. So you will not see many differences in India.

B&E: How significant has been the change in the SEO and search engine space since the internet originated?

Bruce Clay: I was fortunate. I started doing SEO in 1996, almost 3 years before Google. Back then, there were 19 search engines – and Google was not dominant. Today, there are only a few major ones, rest have been merged or acquired. We have a very long history of search engines going away. I don’t think Google is going to be dominant. In 2009 or 2008, their market share actually shrank. Certainly, what I think we are finding is that similar to what happened to browsers – In the beginning there was Netscape, then there was IE, then there was Firefox and then along came Chrome – people are changing with respect to the search engines they’re using. I still think there is going to be room for a new search engine in the market, but I don’t know if it’s going to any time soon compete with Google. In 1996-98, it was to be able to go to a search engine result and when I looked at the pages, 1, 2 & 3 maybe had some sort of SEO on it. Now, there are hundreds. And they all have something. As the marketplace gets more optimised, quality of top sites are improving. People who do searches do not have to go as far. In 1996, people would search – go through page 1, 2, 3 & 4, switch to different search engines. Now, if you don’t find it on page 1, you change your query and do it again. You add some words and do another search.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
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