Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Abey John on March 19, 2011 at 3:11pm

What pisses me off is to be TOLD by SEO consultants - hey, people are searching for Paneer Tikka and Butter Chicken in your city (search results on google etc etc), so why not mention THOSE items on your menu (you may not even make them)

These are not SEO consultants. They are the snake oil merchants that give SEO such a bad name.

1. If you are a Sushi destination then you should talk about sushi, live and breathe sushi, and even etc sushi. Period. Your content is Sushi. Not paneer #$#%#$#$ tikka masala
2. If there is no search traffic for sushi then you don't have a case for SEO, case closed, pursue other methods of marketing
3. If you have 30 million people searching for sushi every month and you are not getting even a fraction of that traffic then you have a case for SEO and calling SEO bunk because said snake oil merchant said why dont you make paneer tikka masala sushi to get your traffic is just plain misinformed.

And I have exactly 1 mins left for today on rodinhood! Stayfocusd! :)

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Permalink Reply by Alok 'Rodinhood' Kejriwal on March 19, 2011 at 3:55pm

Yatin - your reply has a conflict!

The place where sushi hungry people ask for directions is no longer google - its FACEBOOK!

coz people ask friends where to eat - not strangers!!

hence, making a facebook app would be a mush better bet for me that investing in other marketing right?

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Permalink Reply by Mahesh Khambadkone on March 19, 2011 at 3:26pm

Run the Sushi company.

Focus on making your food taste good. Then
- SEO + advertising + social integration + payment integration + Facebook integration all makes sense.

If your Sushi tastes like chicken salted in the sea, no amount of SEO + facebook fan pages + paid campaigns + word of mouth will help.

There's SECompliance (hygiene), and there should be SEO once after, offered on a SAAS-model.

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Permalink Reply by Aditya Rao on March 19, 2011 at 3:28pm

I am not an SEO consultant but I think that if your Sushi restaurant is in a crowded space (most likely possible) and you need customers to find out about you first, than apart from ads, one thing you can do to make sure that you catch their eye first is good SEO.

Note:
Not all customers come from referrals. Most still come through when they decide to eat Sushi and than finalise on a restaurant by searching on the streets.

Thought:
SEO is def. needed, how its done and it should be done I can not comment on. This is analogous to Social media; it is needed but how are agencies doing it and how should you do it is for you to find out.

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Permalink Reply by Anuj Khurana on March 19, 2011 at 4:00pm

The problem Alok is going to have (and i think that is what he pointed out in the first post) is

- Between the 10 results that Google places give (though bringing your name high on Google places is SEO too
) and the burrp and the asklaila which are default results on most google searches there is only limited space left. The cost of coming up in those 10 is so high that it makes no sense to do SEO and I am better off running google ads paying Rs 5 click.

- Are people searching for Sushi bar on Google anymore? Are they rather going to Burrp and looking up sushi restaurant reviews?

- How often have you seen fb status message of people asking for 'where do i go to eat Sushi in Mumbai"? I see it quiet often (though not for Sushi just yet)

For a sushi bar SEO is going to turn out too expensive. I am going to ask the client to not bother with SEO for now....do SEM....let me run it for him....I would ensure I run ads for all terms including butter chicken and tikka masala. Copy like "What butter chicken again? Surprise your wife take her to et Sushi" might just work. If it does not I will change the ad. Easy to experiment.

A lot of categories today suffer from this. With sites like burrp being the default choice for people to look up restaurants (not google), tripadvisor for travel and so on SEO is losing its "criticality" for a whole bunch of businesses.

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Permalink Reply by Alok 'Rodinhood' Kejriwal on March 19, 2011 at 4:03pm

Phew....Anuj, thanks... seems like its finally hitting home!

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Permalink Reply by Abey John on March 20, 2011 at 2:51am

- Between the 10 results that Google places give (though bringing your name high on Google places is SEO too ) and the burrp and the asklaila which are default results on most google searches there is only limited space left. The cost of coming up in those 10 is so high that it makes no sense to do SEO and I am better off running google ads paying Rs 5 click.

Oh man I hate religious wars. This is turning into one drunken wild west town where every one is sherrif and villain at the same time. And all are firing peashooters loaded with live ammo. There is such a deep seated misunderstanding of how search engines work but more importantly the cognitive space that users inhabit in the search space that I think I'll be better off going into a corner and quietly and steadily get drunk. Crying is not an option.

SEO (Yatin's definition is brilliant: semantic engagement optimization) is not about brand. SEO is about entering into the user's intent. In this space the brand does not exist. Sushi is a bad example for this. Games is a good example for this. Globally 1.5 million or thereabouts search for the term 'free online games'. They are not interested in games2win, yahoo games, zygna. A #1 rank in this space will get 30% of the traffic or thereabouts. Intent has already been established. They want free online games. When they land on your page you need to make sure that you engage them. Approximately 50% will bounce off. You are left with 50% of 30% of 1.5 mil. Per your metrics Alok each user is giving you about 6 page impressions at an average cpm of $5...so....thats about 1350 CPM = $6750 per month. The only question is how much you are willing to spend to gain and maintain a $6k/month revenue stream. Note that these are all likelihood all new uniques every month. A certain percentage of that will develop brand loyalty which will in turn fuel a lift in your brand traffic. Other benefits - optimizing for #1 on free online games will create rankings on the long tail which will bring in more traffic which you didnt even think about but more importantly dont need to think about. With every other form of traffic acquisition you do not have this spill over effect. When you stop your natak in the channel, your traffic disappears. With search you can sleep for a while (or as long as the competition will let you) and the traffic will still keep coming in.

Like with a prime mover the initial effort to get search oriented is going to be high (yes you can use facebook and twitter too and also engage in the content creation and engagement dance) like the initial energy required to start an engine however once it gets going the effects will multiply itself and you will fall into maintenance mode till you see some competitor coming up in the rearview which is when you need to add some steam and fuel and get a bit more ahead of him. SEO is a resources game the one who has the most resources wins, walks home laughing to the bank.

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Permalink Reply by Alok 'Rodinhood' Kejriwal on March 20, 2011 at 11:31am

Abey - This is exactly the problem I have trying to describe:

1.5 MILLION folks search for 'Free Online Games' (per day/month?)

BUT , and BIG BUT

600 MILLION PLAY ONLINE GAMES EACH DAY/MONTH ON THE WEB!!! (comScore)

So, why even bother chasing 1.5 million of 600 million?? (2.5% and then scrape some % of them)

Aka - why try and eat breadcrumbs of breadcrumbs, when there is piece of bread visible?

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Permalink Reply by Abey John on March 21, 2011 at 7:57am

600 MILLION PLAY ONLINE GAMES EACH DAY/MONTH ON THE WEB!!! (comScore)

How? Whatever traffic acquisition you use - brand building/social media/seo - demographic spread varies and therefore the targeting issues are the same: this is not one homogeneous mass of 600 million people all 19.8 year olds playing Doom from dawn to dusk.

The only way to target them is one segment at a time. Demographic slicing and targeting is one way. Social media targeting is another route. Both depend on the diffuse idea of building enthusiasm around the brand.

SEO works on the principle of building enthusiasm around intent. Intent is why you have a 30% CTR on search vs the sub 0.1% CTR on Facebook ads. Facebook marketers will have orgasms if you cross 0.1% CTR and then die and go to heaven if you nudge the 0.25% barrier and award themselves Oscars, rebrand themselves as gurus and drive around like the cat go the whiskers.

There is only one way to reach your 600 million users: 1 user at a time. And search and therefore SEO gives you a clump of those individuals with total clarity of intent. Everyother medium is reading the tea leaves and hiring starlets to build interest. On search the AI in AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is already done for you. Its your job then from the moment you first appear in the search results till they exit having given you the outcome you want to invoke Desire and propel their Action.

In every other medium you needs to bust your nut to generating Attention and Interest and by the time you do that you more likely than not will have screwed over a major portion of your budget.

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Permalink Reply by Aneja Raj on April 1, 2013 at 12:43pm

Ho Alok, John,

Marketers need to take a more Holistic view in today's Digital world. It is infinitely hard to identify and attribute success to one Marketing Channel or the other. How we measure data today is fundamentally flawed Globally - in that we attribute success / ROI on a LAST VIEW / CLICK  basis (based on pure ad server data). 

At a very basic level, for Example, within Omniture or Web Trends you can set up a report based on Last Touch Channel or a First Touch Channel. Below is an example of how the data will show in each Instance:

Last Touch Channel - In the above example, 1.5MM searches at a CTR of 30% would be 45k Visits to Games2win. However note that this is purely based on the last touched Marketing channe - Meaning this was the last Channel a user visited before he converted, in this case SEO.

However in the same example, off the 1.5MM users, who SAW the Games2Win link on SEO, assume the remaining 70% did not click on the Search result. Instead they continued to browse and saw a Display Ad followed by a Newspaper Ad. Then they went on to their browser and typed "Games2win directly on their Address bar. Since the address bar (Site) was the last channel they visited before they converted, Omniture would attribute the visits / clicks / conversion directly to the  Site (Direct to Games2Win). SEO would not get the Credit.  

Now Flip the Switch and view the same data in a First Touch channel report within the same Omniture setting. Although the site was the Last channel they touched before they converted, SEO was the First channel they touched in that Conversion funnel. So SEO, 70% users in this instance, will get the credit.

This is just an example, but 30 - 70% is a huge difference and a determinable factor on how we spend our dollars to optimize media.

In other words, 1.5MM searches may have more value than we estimate it to have. There are companies these days who can due a true attribution analysis, such as Adometry that I am working with now.

Apologies for the delayed response on this topics - but my 2 cents!

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Permalink Reply by Abey John on April 1, 2013 at 1:40pm

Hey Aneja,

The point I was making was about the relative value of focusing on SEO as a discrete practice rather than as an incidental afterthought.  

Visibility of channel attribution in the conversion funnel is of course important though I suspect in g2w's case this may not be critical since the audience are in the instant gratification segment and there is no great decision/persuasion cycle that is needed to play a game.  Nevertheless attribution should prove insightful especially now that the google beast is moving towards fuzzy social and co-citation signaling to establish authority and relevance.  

Search is about 'have an itch, need to scratch'.  g2w fits that category like a T and hence there will be a positive correlation between investing in SEO and ROI irrespective of the final channel that drives the game engagement.

Great 2 cents! :)

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Permalink Reply by Jayesh Gopalan on March 19, 2011 at 5:01pm

Alok,Perfectly said today people ask for directions on FACEBOOK !
I think recommendation is going to be the big thing in Facebook.

Now also there is no perfect site on which you can depend on.
So there is a huge opportunity in Facebook and i think some application is needed through which i can ask or my friends can recommend me the best sushi restaurant and people will go to that sushi restaurant which his friends have recommended.

Even if you see from the traditional offline marketing what sells is "Word of Mouth" Marketing.
Today all the "Word of Mouth" marketing happens through Socail Media.

So i think SOCIAL MEDIA will replace SEO.

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