We’ve talked about this before.
Google is picking up the pace of changing their business model. Instead of offering the free traffic and free services they have in the past they are focusing on a few main areas and are charging more.
One area of change is Google’s biggest revenue generator – paid search.
An article on Inc. shared the outlook.
From How Google Is Killing Organic Search:
So if you think no one clicks on Google ads, you’re wrong: When people are searching in order to investigate or make a purchase, over 64% click a sponsored result. Keep in mind unpaid clicks still account for the majority of Google search clicks… but if a keyword is valuable to a business, PPC advertisements typically generate double the number of clicks compared to organic results.
Why? Google has steadily introduced bigger, more targeted, and more engaging sponsored ad formats.
There is more in the article. Be sure to check it out entirely along with the linked information and research from WordStream.
I don’t want to jump on the SEO is Dead bandwagon, but the writing is on the wall. SEO is changing. There are no longer ten blue text links on the Google search results page. Today, Google is making the result pages more relevant, in their minds, for users and this happens to include more paid and sponsored links.
Obviously this makes sense for Google. They never had a reason to provide free traffic for websites in the first place. It was nice while it lasted, but now it’s time to shift focus.
There are still folks that ask me about blogging specifically looking for ways to improve the SEO of their company. They want the organic traffic to come to their site so they can get new customers. This is certainly still possible and will always be possible. It’s just that the organic traffic is changing.
In the future Google will provide less free traffic. I think it will always be there, but you can never be sure of what will happen in the future. Google is a smart company. People depend on their various services and are starting to pay for them.
If your company has a blog, which I still recommend, it’s necessary to change the focus for getting traffic.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the sources of blogging traffic that you should focus on now that Google has changed its direction.