Strategic net promotion firm GILL Media states the obvious: Google is an advertizing company.
The title much says it all. Google is an marketing company. But do people think it? The difference between Google's public picture (engineers providing free services) & its true business focus (marketing) represents a significant challenge for SEO professionals. It sets up the perception that we're trying to "game" a noncommercial service when the truth is that we're trying to put our clients' best foot forward in a relationship that's business-driven on both sides – but where one side (site owners & content providers) generate the worth that gives the other (Google) a viable business model at all. So how can a white-hat SEO professional make this clear?
Finding Common Ground with Google . . .
White hat search engine optimization firms & Google have one thing in common: the desire to add value with content. Google's revenue model is based on piggybacking on content – the better the content, the better Google's Adwords & Adsense ads convert. If a search term or site turns up spam, users abandon it.
Strategic SEO efforts depend on content . They would like it to be novel, well-written, beautiful & clear, all with the agenda of driving visitors to our clients' goals – sales, information capture, etc. Content-focused SEO doesn't need to be the enemy of search quality & when it's done well, it isn't. Explaining this to clients – & generating content to back it up – is a great way to position SEO professionals as fair players.
. . . & Begging to Differ
Regrettably, clashes occur when Google & SEO create different definitions of quality content. For all of its innovation, Google's ideal world appears to be rooted in the mid-90s Web: a host of mostly noncommercial, hobby-driven sites where nobody has a profit motive . . . except for Google, who would presumably lace every hobbyhorse site with contextual ads that lead to otherwise-invisible commercial destinations. Google has no interest in someone seeing your e commerce store or lead form through organic search, except through them.
Even then, some people might get behind this since it sounds like a user-centric owner – but it isn't. The Web is a commercial location by organic intent. Shopping & doing business are core parts of the user experience for everyone. That means commercial content is quality content because people are looking for it. That's excellent news for Web-based businesses because it makes them organic search targets . . . which doesn't make Google as much money as in case you got to the same location by clicking through an commercial.
Google can't directly monkey with commercial sites – that would cause people to lose faith in its search engine – but sometimes, it goes out of its way to make gaining ground on organic search dangerous for businesses. This is a double edged sword for SEO. On one hand, it's one reason why companies need our help, but on the other, it brings out Google's ugly side.
Google is Not the Net Police
Think about paid jogging a blog. Google doesn't require you sell links unless you use the Nofollow tag (which ensures the link passes on no authority or "link juice" to the linked site). Sounds sensible, right? But what if I send free samples to a blogger who likes it & links without "sterilizing" the link? Don't assume deception – let's say they comes right out & says they got free stuff. Google may kick that blogger's search rating to the curb not because they didn't follow ethical marketing guidelines (they did) but out of an appeal to some nebulous notion of "quality" – & keep in mind, product reviews are what people do look for, millions of times a day. Google's owner doesn't enforce an ethical stance, doesn't add value for the user.
It does however close a tactic that works a heck of a lot like Google's own ads. Google has no interest in promoting that. Why? Google is an marketing company.
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