The last couple months have been absolute chaos for a lot of SEOs.
Niche sites deindexed.
Media sites’ having their traffic evaporated.
Commentary on Reddit suggests that the search console is a trap.
And more debates and arguments about the future of search than ever before.
Put simply:
The industry is a chaotic mess right now…
And the “future of SEO” is being questioned more than ever before.
Why?
Well, it doesn’t help when brands like Gartner are suggesting that:
“By 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”
Or they’re predicting that:
“By 2028, brands’ organic search traffic will decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search.”
Because of this:
The narrative that SEO is dead (or at the very least dying) has never been at an all-time high.
But it’s complete BS.
As these stories continue to make waves on the internet I’m reminded of an adage from Warren Buffett who once said it’s wise for investors “to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
Content marketing has always been an activity that I’d liked to think about from the perspective of investing. By adding investing related first principles to the idea of content marketing you’re able to increase your likelihood of success with it.
Brands spend money to create assets (content) and these assets drive results (traffic / leads / sales) over time if they’re willing to continue to invest in them. If you invest in SEO driven content, you have the ability to capture market gains on the back of keywords and phrases that have value based on the searcher and the intent. The competition in these scenarios are all the other brands that are competing in the SERP for that same traffic and searcher.
Now here’s where things get interesting…
A few years ago, there was an index created called the Fear & Greed Index which was a multifactorial market sentiment analysis of different asset classes. Some of them measured the levels of fear and greed in the crypto market and some measured the stock market.
Here’s how they look:
At the time of this screenshot (April 2020), the fear levels around Bitcoin were at an all time high. The price was down to roughly $8,900 USD and many in the industry were frantically scared to put any of their hard earned money into this cryptocurrency. Fast forward a few years and we all wish we had a time machine to tell ourselves to take Buffet’s advice.
But this isn’t about crypto…
This is about SEO.
Right now, I’m willing to bet that a lot of your competition is second guessing more now than ever whether or not they should invest in search. More now than ever a lot of organizations are reading these pieces from Gartner and thinking it’s time for us to pause our organic SEO strategy and go all-in on running more display ads and sponsoring events.
I get it. And I don’t blame them.
It’s not easy to invest when chaos is all around you.
Which is why I’m thrilled to see this data from the team at SparkToro and Datos. It’s an analysis of the web’s largest traffic referrers from January 2024. Here’s the chart showing that Google still represents nearly 63% of all referral traffic to all sites on the web:
And for a comparison:
Instagram sends less than 1%.
LinkedIn sends less than 1%.
Amazon sends less than 1%.
Google is still the king.
SEO is still the top driver of referral traffic and while everyone second guesses whether it’s worth investing in – smart brands should view this as an opportunity.
At Foundation, we support software and cloud companies with their SEO by building holistic strategies that drive top and bottom of funnel traffic. Our approach is streamlined and effective. We understand the audience, identify relevant keywords and topics worth covering, develop best-in-class content, distribute that content to drive authority, and help these brands scale their content production & distribution efforts to drive better ROI.
It might sound basic.
But in reality – The basics are what give you an edge while everyone else chases the shiny new ball. We’re believers in content diversification. No doubt about it…
But we’re also believers in capturing demand from search while others sleep on the opportunity.
If you’re interested in learning more about this – Get in touch. I’d love to chat.
