Recession-proof Search Engine Optimization
Here in the United States, people are losing their jobs, losing their ability to borrow against the equity in their homes, and they are using all their available credit card balances months in advance of the Christmas shopping season. In a consumer-driven economy, the declining ability of consumers to spend money affects many industries. We’ve already experienced huge drop offs in new home sales, new car sales, and large appliance sales. The furniture industry (both commercial and residential sectors) has also hit the skids.
In between the retail/manufacturing block and consumers stands the financial sector. Many small American banks (and some quite large banks) extended a lot of credit to help buy new homes over the past eight years. At the same time, the banking industry pressured the United States Congress to pass one of the most degrading and humiliating bankruptcy laws in U.S. history; the purpose of the law is to force consumers to continue paying on their debts despite their inability to make payments in the first place. And the banking industry poured salt on consumer’s wounds by refusing to reduce fees, interest rates, and minimum payments.
We have nonetheless seen large numbers of consumer bankruptcies despite the banks’ hardened credit restrictions. Furthermore, as the banks bet their fortunes on keeping consumers in debt, their rates of bad debts increased. Banks charge off bad debts as uncollectible in order to reduce their earnings, thus gaining tax write-offs (banks also typically sell the names and addresses of charged-off debtors to debt speculators like the Sherman Companies, who take advantage of loopholes in the Consumer Fair Debt Collection Act by working through attorneys and debt collectors to harass people into paying off the debts that have been charged off).
So now many major banks have failed and many investors whose stocks depended on mortgage and credit card debt are panicking, in turn driving down the value of other stocks by liquidating their stock holdings and forcing brokerages to sell, sell, sell. As more stocks flood the market, the prices of stocks decline, and as the prices of stocks decline, more investors panic and sell off their holdings.
That is how recessions happen. Somewhere an economy extends itself a little too far and a contraction begins. Economists tell us this is normal. Economies have to correct themselves from time to time. The length and depth of a recession depends, at least in part, on how overextended the economy had become. Based on what we’re hearing about the current crisis, it seems we’ve managed to out-extend our Internet Bubble overextension of the late 1990s.
If you were to ask random strangers to think about who would be most likely to come through this growing financial crisis with the least amount of loss, you might find a consensus developing around people who are debt-free and still employed. Maybe they even own some assets likes houses, cars, furniture, and appliances. Ideally, these recession-proof consumers also have money in the bank, their savings plans are intact, and their 401(k) plans are robust and well-managed.
Everyone else will suffer at least some loss in a recession, and that brings us (finally) to search engine optimization. There are certain industries that some of us have been counting on that are about to go through a contraction. There are certain industries that some of have been counting on that are NOT about to go through a contraction.
Don’t you hope your client base is recession-proof?
Not so long ago there was a very healthy SEO and PPC market serving the needs of mortgage brokers, home builders, and furniture supply companies. Many such companies no longer exist and many others have curtailed their marketing budgets. You’ll still find plenty of sponsored ads for “mortgage broker” but you won’t find as many mortgage brokers are still in business as there were two years ago.
Real estate agents aren’t very happy right now, either. As it takes longer and longer to sell houses (not to mention the declining prices of homes), the agents have seen their revenue streams plummet.
In bad times, some businesses fight back through more aggressive marketing, but they watch their return on investment more closely. If you’re a PPC manager, your ability to retain clients may depend more than previously on your ability to build high conversion ratios. If you’re an organic SEO technician or Web marketer, you need to demonstrate substantial growth in qualified traffic to client sites. Qualified traffic means “conversions”.
Search engine optimization can help some companies carve out a larger slice of pie, thus depriving competitors of valuable sales. But if everyone makes a last ditch effort to build search market share, no one may gain enough to say the expense was worthwhile.
Companies may try to bring their SEO services in house. However, instead of hiring specialists to perform the necessary tasks many firms will ask untrained employees to make critical decisions.
Companies that have been lavishing money on SEO and PPC consultants may cut back on those expenses or do away with them altogether.
Small firms that depend on search traffic may actually increase their PPC spend in order to compensate for declining walk-in or floor sales.
As a consultant you have some flexibility in that you can lower your fees for a few clients if they stay with you. But you have to find new ways to market yourself or your own customer base may leave you short a few dollars. One option the independent consultant can pursue is to subcontract for other SEO firms — writing copy, managing PPC campaigns, designing Web sites, etc. The consultant needs a strong network for referrals anyway, so if the referrals dry up there may be other opportunities.
The best consultants are generalists. They can do most Web marketing jobs reasonably well but they are expert in few if any specific functions.
Specialists, on the other hand, are entirely dependent upon the demand for their skill sets. I’ve lived through two tech industry recessions where my highly specialized programming skills and years of experience helped me get jobs, but the declining number of available positions finally led me to get out of that field of programming.
Fortunately for today’s SEO technicians, I think the demand for copywriting and link building is not likely to decline, but American companies will continue to off-shore these tasks to less expensive specialists in Asia. You cannot compete with someone who doesn’t have a $2,000-a-month mortgage.
SEO technicians who find their services in declining demand may want to seek related work that calls for them to be the “in-house” guru. Yes, if you fled a service industry job for the freedom of search optimization, your combined experience may help you find work in an industry that has cut back on its out-sourced search engine optimization. You can be the “in-house” guy who takes someone else’s client private.
Why do that? First, you’ll have an opportunity to keep your SEO skills current. Second, you’ll be earning a regular paycheck. Third, if you can significantly improve the company’s online sales while meeting your non-SEO objectives, why would they NOT offer you a full-time in-house SEO tech job? Dude, recessions make opportunities for flexible people who are willing to do some grunt work in order to prove themselves.
SEO firms that have to keep going forward can re-evaluate their client bases. Planning ahead to replace companies that probably won’t survive the economic crisis makes your pain more managable. Okay, maybe you’re the “go to guy” for real estate sites in your area — but if your real estate agent clientele is declining, you need to find another industry to service before you run out of revenue.
Some client companies may be ignoring potential opportunities in search because they are comfortable. Knocking on some doors that are already open to you may provide you with some new revenues. Maybe your clients are already thinking, “Hey, my competitors are looking shaky — now is the time to strike!”
Whether you’re an independent consultant, a freelance PPC/SEO tech, or a full-service firm, revising your business plan to position your strengths to help companies not only survive but improve their sales in a recession is a better bet than just doing what you’ve always been doing.
The American economy lost $1,000,000,000,000 in value on Monday, September 29, 2008 just because the U.S. Congress could not stop injecting partisan political commentary into what should have been a slam-dunk passage of legislation intended to help restore balance to the Force (of Wall Street). There were a LOT of future PPC ads in that 1 trillion dollars. A LOT of future Web site modifications vanished in the space of a few hours.
This economy will probably lose more value in the next few weeks, value that won’t be available to drive new business loans, new consumer purchases, new sales of durable goods, new jobs, new advertising campaigns. If you’re not helping your clients save money, make money, and stay in business, then why do they need you?
Just repackaging your services with a new title and marketing slogan, “Fight the recession with SEO!” isn’t sufficient. You need to offer real value, not so much in the way of price discounts as in the way of innovation, measured success, and return on investment. That calls for doing new research to identify query trends that help your clients’ customers save money while doing business with your clients. That calls for streamlining your own practices, improving your efficiencies, reducing your costs, and reducing your time for deliverables.
The largest cost in search engine optimization is time.
If you can reduce the amount of time your clients have to wait before they see an improvement in their search results, you’ll be reducing one of your largest costs.
You don’t accomplish that by continuing to do what you’ve always done. You can only get ahead if you constantly retool, re-evaluate, and adjust. That is, the way to ensure you survive a recession is to practice the SEO Method: experiment, evaluate, adjust.
www.seo-theory.com
published @ September 30, 2008