People who hate on SEO have always had this as a common rally cry: “Title tag. H tag. Done!”
What that means is SEO is simple, and all you have to do to rank is put your keyword in the <title> tag, in the <h*> tag, and boom you’ll rank.
This chant is always rebutted with the “PPC – The lazy man’s SEO” t-shirt I had a few years back at Pubcon.
While we all know these forms of online marketing both require a lot more attention than those remarks imply, I think it’s time to update the SEO one. Ready or not, here it is:
Buy exact match domain. Done!
Google’s boost for exact match domains is as strong as ever based on my experience. You want to rank for “beach sandals”? Screw everything you’ve heard about building links or title tags. Get your hands on BeachSandals.com and things are going to work for you. I promise.
Now, I support the reasoning behind the exact match bonus. I know why it’s there. It’s just one of many things going on in SEO that make me want to spend my time on something else these days.
The others? How about the pandemic link drought on the web. No one will link to anything. Good viral content can bring eyeballs, but rarely will it bring links. Retweets don’t count yet in the rankings to my knowledge . . .
Even still, if you are able to develop a way to bring in links on scale, you’re likely to get scrutinized. They could be 100% free, earned, “yes I like this site, think it’s good for to link to and here’s the link”. Anything on scale is going to get you into trouble.
Forgive me, but when the person who does less gets rewarded, I’m pissed. I like the beach but only after a good day’s work. The link economy is so jacked up that getting less links is actually better. Try competing in that environment for awhile. “So I should do less. Okay, how much less is enough less?” Ridiculous.
A few other complaints include-
You can’t buy links much any more. People that sell them have polluted pages filled with casino, UK crap, or payday loans. Good sites don’t sell them. Getting them in the sidebar or the footer seems more like an eyesore or red flag than an honest vote.
Plus, the new Google design has also hurt organic CTR’s, just one instance in the line of many that have pushed organic results down and out from the top of the SERPs.
So I’m left with these thoughts-
Buy exact match domains. That should work for awhile. Don’t get too many links to them. Just a few good ones. Let it ride.
Down the road, I better get a lot better at monetizing social, PPC, and building a list/platform to survive, with all my businesses.
Cause the SEO route is competing for a much smaller chunk of traffic than it did 5 years ago, and it’s no fun in a link-less economy that lets exactmatch.org rank on name alone.
5 years ago I was an SEO all the way. Today I’m basically a domainer. In 5 years, I’m not sure I’ll be either. Pick a buzzword: “zero sum game” “diminishing returns”.
How about “no fun anymore”.
Image: Paul Thurlby
