4 ms·

SEO Strategy that Works

84 points by rgrieselhuber 16y ago

terra_t 16y ago
A hint I'll drop is that the "monetizability" of a niche for advertising isn't what you'd think. For one thing, areas that everybody thinks are "monetizable" often have huge amounts of content chasing a small advertising spend, resulting in very low eCPM. Then there are capricious factors that are very specific to the niche. You do better with a Chevy forum than a Cadillac forum because the real money is in ads for aftermarket parts -- Caddy enthusiasts like OEM parts, so nobody wants to advertise to them. (GM doesn't, since people on Caddy forums are already sold on the brand and know more about the next crop of Caddies coming out than the dealers do.) Overall, web publishers cheat themselves out of ad revenue by choosing topics the way they do. If you threw a dart at the "encyclopedia of the situation" and picked a random topic you'd get better than average results! Personally I'm delighted by the increasing use of behavioral targeting technology: I'm finding that behavioral targeting is greatly raising the revenue I get from my worst performing sites.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  "Personally I'm delighted by the increasing use of behavioral targeting technology: I'm finding that behavioral targeting is greatly raising the revenue I get from my worst performing sites." Can you please elaborate on that?
  - terra_t 16y ago
    For a long time, Google ads were entirely contextual: they served up ads based on the content of your page. Contextual ads work well on a site for which the text is predictive of what ads will make money; for instance, in the case of a car forum, you can figure out what kind of cars are being talked about, if they are fixing up drivers, if they are racing, whatever. Contextual ads work poorly on sites (like Facebook) that aren't really about any topic in particular -- because the text isn't predictive of anything. Also, in some cases, you can predict accurately what ads are likely to make a profit, but the profit isn't much. Behavioral ads to the rescue -- the ad network sticks a cookie on your and tracks your interests over the long term. Although contextual ads are (overall) better targeted, a network like Adsense that does both can guess which will perform best for a particular impression, raising earnings for publishers and the networks. Behavioral ads take many forms, but my favorite form right now are ones that are integrated with the shopping process. For instance, if you spend some time on Zappos, you might find ads for Zappos on other sites that feature the sort of products you were looking at. (Right now I'm thinking about what the next Gamecube RPG I'm going to buy next, so it would be logical for AMZN to try to tempt me to close the deal) Anyway, Google added behavioral targeting and third party ad networks a few months ago -- publishers don't need to do anything special to benefit... we just get bigger checks!
    - carbocation 16y ago
      I like this both as a publisher and a consumer. (Privacy issues are real, of course, but I can browse in ptivate mode, via proxy, etc if I choose.)
      - rmc 16y ago
        A web proxy might hide your IP address from the original website, however I guess that Google uses cookies to keep track of you. This means a web proxy won't help your privacy, since Google would still have a big record of you, what you buy, what you browse, who you are.
    - chopsueyar 16y ago
      I have noticed this in my own browsing. Unfortunately, after I purchase the "researched" item, I continue to see ads related to my purchase for several days. What type of Adsense ads do you use (text, image)?
- demet8 16y ago
  If you don't mind, expand a bit more on your targeting technique i.e. how you look for a niche, set it up, then aggressively monetize it.....
  - terra_t 16y ago
    If you read the comment carefully you'll see the secret is hidden in plain sight. Unfortunately my procedure for deriving the "encyclopedia of the situation" is a closely guarded secret; in 15 years or so it will be 200 feet tall and eating your city...
lkozma 16y ago
SEO seems to be an example of a zero-sum game. If everyone adopts the same strategy that "works", wouldn't it stop working?
- InfinityX0 16y ago
  Something like ~60% of searches are unique. So there's plenty of content opportunities out there. But definitely there seems to be a "winner and loser", although it is incredibly hard to define. The high volume, monetizable keywords are more easily defined, and within that sector, the game may be more "zero-sum". Outside in this vague "new search" sector, any person who throws thousands of content pages and gets links will be able to drive a decent amount of traffic. How much, though, is up for debate.
- rgrieselhuber 16y ago
  It seems that way at first, but there is so much new content being created now that there are new opportunities opening up all the time.
- powrtoch 16y ago
  It sort of depends how you look at it. From Google's point of view, good (white hat) SEO is more of an "everyone wins" game, because the more sites that do it, the better the search results get. Your site is returned only when it is relevant, and sites get the attention (ranking) that they actually deserve. Of course, a lot of SEO is more focused on "get my ranking up, no matter what". In a world where everyone uses black hat techniques, it's AT BEST a zero sum game (more realistically, everyone loses, because search engines become useless and then everyone stops using them).
- webwright 16y ago
  Isn't that true for all sales/marketing techniques? If it is, should you not use them? Of course not. It's a moving target, but if you don't keep taking shots at it, you better have a product that is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above your competition on some other level.
- byrneseyeview 16y ago
  No, because SEO can create rankable pages for terms that previously had no useful results. Also, SEO tends to subsidize the creation of entertaining content (see, e.g., the Huffpo or Business Insider).
patio11 16y ago
SEO for games, social or otherwise, is almost always going to be challenging. Any idiot could rank the official Zynga site for Farmville or practically any query with "Farmville" in it. That doesn't really help, though. 1) To the extent that someone is actually searching for Farmville, it is because their business/media juggernaut already has succeeded in reaching that person. Everything after that is about filling transactional intent, which is much less complicated since Zynga has and always will have a total lock on transactions with their brand. 2) Game companies have a lot of difficulty getting non-branded queries to work as a distribution channel. Really, what would you type in to find Farmville prior to finding Farmville. "online farming game"? That's probably near the head of the distribution, and if you rank #1 for it that will get you a few dozen signups a month. That won't move the needle for Zynga. You also probably couldn't scale your way to meaningful numbers through X,000 pieces of content with each one converting a handful of people. So you either go with industrial scale generation and become Demand Media, or you go with the much surer viral/paid ad channels. SEO is really, really good at answering specific needs your prospective customers know they have (Demand Media really, really gets this at a fundamental level). Games typically don't work like that, transactional/navigational queries aside. Of possible note: there are quite a few publishers cashing in on Zynga's lackluster SEO efforts by creating pages responsive to queries like [farmville strategies], [farmville crops], and the like. Those get decent volume but wouldn't result in new account creation. Monetization seems to be a mix of affiliate products and generic backfill AdSense like, e.g., Evony.
- rgrieselhuber 16y ago
  Definitely. I agree that the SEO for games themselves is much harder, although I do know some companies doing quite well at it. As you mention, there is opportunity for 3rd parties and this will increase as brands get further involved. I think it's all still new enough that the needs for (insert search term here) in the context of gaming have not yet been created, but I believe this will change over the next few years.

84 points by rgrieselhuber 16y ago

A hint I'll drop is that the "monetizability" of a niche for advertising isn't what you'd think. For one thing, areas that everybody thinks are "monetizable" often have huge amounts of content chasing a small advertising spend, resulting in very low eCPM. Then there are capricious factors that are very specific to the niche. You do better with a Chevy forum than a Cadillac forum because the real money is in ads for aftermarket parts -- Caddy enthusiasts like OEM parts, so nobody wants to advertise to them. (GM doesn't, since people on Caddy forums are already sold on the brand and know more about the next crop of Caddies coming out than the dealers do.) Overall, web publishers cheat themselves out of ad revenue by choosing topics the way they do. If you threw a dart at the "encyclopedia of the situation" and picked a random topic you'd get better than average results! Personally I'm delighted by the increasing use of behavioral targeting technology: I'm finding that behavioral targeting is greatly raising the revenue I get from my worst performing sites.

chopsueyar 16y ago
"Personally I'm delighted by the increasing use of behavioral targeting technology: I'm finding that behavioral targeting is greatly raising the revenue I get from my worst performing sites." Can you please elaborate on that?
- terra_t 16y ago
  For a long time, Google ads were entirely contextual: they served up ads based on the content of your page. Contextual ads work well on a site for which the text is predictive of what ads will make money; for instance, in the case of a car forum, you can figure out what kind of cars are being talked about, if they are fixing up drivers, if they are racing, whatever. Contextual ads work poorly on sites (like Facebook) that aren't really about any topic in particular -- because the text isn't predictive of anything. Also, in some cases, you can predict accurately what ads are likely to make a profit, but the profit isn't much. Behavioral ads to the rescue -- the ad network sticks a cookie on your and tracks your interests over the long term. Although contextual ads are (overall) better targeted, a network like Adsense that does both can guess which will perform best for a particular impression, raising earnings for publishers and the networks. Behavioral ads take many forms, but my favorite form right now are ones that are integrated with the shopping process. For instance, if you spend some time on Zappos, you might find ads for Zappos on other sites that feature the sort of products you were looking at. (Right now I'm thinking about what the next Gamecube RPG I'm going to buy next, so it would be logical for AMZN to try to tempt me to close the deal) Anyway, Google added behavioral targeting and third party ad networks a few months ago -- publishers don't need to do anything special to benefit... we just get bigger checks!
  - carbocation 16y ago
    I like this both as a publisher and a consumer. (Privacy issues are real, of course, but I can browse in ptivate mode, via proxy, etc if I choose.)
    - rmc 16y ago
      A web proxy might hide your IP address from the original website, however I guess that Google uses cookies to keep track of you. This means a web proxy won't help your privacy, since Google would still have a big record of you, what you buy, what you browse, who you are.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    I have noticed this in my own browsing. Unfortunately, after I purchase the "researched" item, I continue to see ads related to my purchase for several days. What type of Adsense ads do you use (text, image)?
demet8 16y ago
If you don't mind, expand a bit more on your targeting technique i.e. how you look for a niche, set it up, then aggressively monetize it.....
- terra_t 16y ago
  If you read the comment carefully you'll see the secret is hidden in plain sight. Unfortunately my procedure for deriving the "encyclopedia of the situation" is a closely guarded secret; in 15 years or so it will be 200 feet tall and eating your city...

lkozma 16y ago

SEO seems to be an example of a zero-sum game. If everyone adopts the same strategy that "works", wouldn't it stop working?

InfinityX0 16y ago
Something like ~60% of searches are unique. So there's plenty of content opportunities out there. But definitely there seems to be a "winner and loser", although it is incredibly hard to define. The high volume, monetizable keywords are more easily defined, and within that sector, the game may be more "zero-sum". Outside in this vague "new search" sector, any person who throws thousands of content pages and gets links will be able to drive a decent amount of traffic. How much, though, is up for debate.
rgrieselhuber 16y ago
It seems that way at first, but there is so much new content being created now that there are new opportunities opening up all the time.
powrtoch 16y ago
It sort of depends how you look at it. From Google's point of view, good (white hat) SEO is more of an "everyone wins" game, because the more sites that do it, the better the search results get. Your site is returned only when it is relevant, and sites get the attention (ranking) that they actually deserve. Of course, a lot of SEO is more focused on "get my ranking up, no matter what". In a world where everyone uses black hat techniques, it's AT BEST a zero sum game (more realistically, everyone loses, because search engines become useless and then everyone stops using them).
webwright 16y ago
Isn't that true for all sales/marketing techniques? If it is, should you not use them? Of course not. It's a moving target, but if you don't keep taking shots at it, you better have a product that is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above your competition on some other level.
byrneseyeview 16y ago
No, because SEO can create rankable pages for terms that previously had no useful results. Also, SEO tends to subsidize the creation of entertaining content (see, e.g., the Huffpo or Business Insider).

patio11 16y ago

SEO for games, social or otherwise, is almost always going to be challenging. Any idiot could rank the official Zynga site for Farmville or practically any query with "Farmville" in it. That doesn't really help, though. 1) To the extent that someone is actually searching for Farmville, it is because their business/media juggernaut already has succeeded in reaching that person. Everything after that is about filling transactional intent, which is much less complicated since Zynga has and always will have a total lock on transactions with their brand. 2) Game companies have a lot of difficulty getting non-branded queries to work as a distribution channel. Really, what would you type in to find Farmville prior to finding Farmville. "online farming game"? That's probably near the head of the distribution, and if you rank #1 for it that will get you a few dozen signups a month. That won't move the needle for Zynga. You also probably couldn't scale your way to meaningful numbers through X,000 pieces of content with each one converting a handful of people. So you either go with industrial scale generation and become Demand Media, or you go with the much surer viral/paid ad channels. SEO is really, really good at answering specific needs your prospective customers know they have (Demand Media really, really gets this at a fundamental level). Games typically don't work like that, transactional/navigational queries aside. Of possible note: there are quite a few publishers cashing in on Zynga's lackluster SEO efforts by creating pages responsive to queries like [farmville strategies], [farmville crops], and the like. Those get decent volume but wouldn't result in new account creation. Monetization seems to be a mix of affiliate products and generic backfill AdSense like, e.g., Evony.

rgrieselhuber 16y ago
Definitely. I agree that the SEO for games themselves is much harder, although I do know some companies doing quite well at it. As you mention, there is opportunity for 3rd parties and this will increase as brands get further involved. I think it's all still new enough that the needs for (insert search term here) in the context of gaming have not yet been created, but I believe this will change over the next few years.