The internet, during its relatively short life, was born a republic and and has been transformed into a sovereignty. Tim Berners-Lee kindly gifted the World Wide Web to us all, free of charge and from then on a power battle has been waged by the great powers.
At the beginning of 2015 it’s clear that Google sits on the throne courtesy of the fact that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine query. Using their search engine dominance Google generated almost $60 Billion in revenue for 2013, and they are constantly searching to increase that amount. And some of the techniques that they deploy are, shall we say, somewhat dubious as we have demonstrated in an earlier blog post on this site. But what does this mean for small or medium sized business owners trying to increase their reach online?
Will 2015 be the year of the internet revolt? What will happen when Google take their internet dominance to the next level and take a bigger slice of the pie from everyone else? The same thing that happens when any country taxes their population too much, revolution. Anyone making a search with Google can see the changes they have been making recently. What happens when Google makes it possible to shop for iPads without the customer even having to visit Apple, Ebay or Amazon? The traffic (and Revenue) to their site will fall and they won’t be happy.
As you can see here Google make the shopping experience very simple by featuring the traditional paid search links, but also now the Shopping (also paid) links to the right of the screen. Meaning that if you don’t want to pay Google for an ad, people probably won’t be visiting your site when shopping for something specific. With the development and progression of mobile, the other internet giants will surely look to cut out Google. If Google will divert the internet flow away from Apple, Apple will look to perfect their own mobile search with an alternative IOS app. And given that Apple can sell over 10 million new iPhones in a weekend, their search engine punching weight becomes formidable.
So how can small or medium sized businesses keep up? The answer is that you need to keep doing the right things and Google will reward you. Google’s algorithm changes are usually copied by the other search engines, so if you’re complying with Google’s best practice guidelines the chances are that you will for Bing, Yahoo and whoever else too. Searches are becoming intuitive, and the strategy for your Paid Search campaign and for your SEO is becoming more complex with key decisions to be taken depending on your key target rank phrases.
Recent developments at Google are policing Backlinks, and if you have them in the wrong places you will be punished. So it has become more and more important to develop your own authoritative backlinks through other means, such as having a great social media branding campaign, and generating shareable content. So let the battle commence at the Royal table, and make sure your business optimises its internet presence with SearchVista.
