I put this shift down to a commoditisation of PPC in many areas of the market, alongside Google’s aggressive sales strategy, as well as a demystifying of SEO into something which is now a core part of any online marketing strategy.

It will be interesting for me to see how this progresses over the next year or so as back when I started out in PPC it was very much the mysterious beast that SEO is now, or has been in recent years.  But as it has become less of a mystery, and companies have become to understand it more, many services have become devalued and with agencies having to make sure they are at the cutting edge of the market to make sure they are adding sufficient value to their clients.  As SEO too, becomes a more widely covered topic will it go the same way?  Will the fees clients are willing to pay be driven down and more clients look to take their SEO in house?

If so, what will replace it?  You can see on the bottom of the trend graph Facebook advertising starting to creep into the picture as a trending keyword, maybe some terminology around social advertising is going to be the next boom topic in digital advertising.  It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out.

There have been many confusing messages in the media about the success or failure of the Times paywall.  Competitor publications have predictably claimed it to be a huge failure; other figures suggest a drop off of two thirds readership from free to paid is a success against the 90% drop off the Times had expected.  Claims that the Times is now “an empty world” seem inconclusive with the publication themselves have declined to comment.

For me, whatever level the user base has dropped to, this is just phase 1 of the paywall process, and it will be the next 6-12 months that dictate the true success of the paywall as it begins to take shape and there are a number of key factors which will determine its true success.

Quality of content

If you are going to charge people for access to news articles and opinion, it’s going to have to be better than other articles available for free elsewhere.  The Times will have to ensure their editorial content is going to have to be of a higher quality than their competition to justify the charge and prove that the money is going to good use.

Advertising revenues

Just because the paywall is in place doesn’t mean the Times has written off advertising as a revenue channel, far from it.  In fact having registered users in a closed network opens up a host of additional options for targeted advertising.  Historically advertising in newspapers and on their online versions has been done based on readership and audience profiles.  The information required to sign up for the paywall will enable the Times to offer targeting options based on an individual user, rather than an aggregated version of the whole group.  This type of targeting general allows for more premium pricing and if they manage to do it intelligently could generate serious income.

Word of mouth

At the moment the Times are the bad guys for charging for content.  A small group have decided to stick with it and if the Times can prove the value to this group, then this group will become key to future growth.  When people find out that somebody pays for the Times content, they are bound to ask “why?”, and “whats it like?”, if the response is positive you have a potential new buyer, if its neutral or negative, then you don’t.  If the response is “awesome, great content, a great read and well worth the money” then word will spread.

The competition

The Times are the first to introduce a paywall in traditional press, but I doubt they will be the last.  Other online publications are going to have to find their own way to make sure revenues generated online cover the overheads of delivering the content.  Whilst the competition can sit back and suggest the paywall is a failure for now, there is going to come a point where they have to decide what the route forward for their own online strategy is.  And if it materialises that other follow down the paywall route, then the Times will be ahead of the game in terms of making it work.

It’s all about building momentum

All of these points will contribute to building momentum (or not).  If you present great editorial to current users, they will spread the word and your user base will grow.  Continue to add even more great content and value, and you build a snowball effect.  Similar with the advertising, if you build a solid advertising model and targeting options you might convince a few media buyers to give it a go, if it’s good, word will spread.  Obviously this requires the Times to get a few things right.  If the content isn’t good, or the advertising model is poor, then momentum won’t build and things might go into meltdown.  There’s a long road ahead, but it definitely can’t be deemed a success or failure just yet.

Whilst on the same day Affiliate Window formally merged with Zanox, a deal which originated last year but seems set to become something more formal from a public facing perspective.  With Zanox already owning Buy.at they now represent a large portion of the UK affiliate marketing space.  It could be suggested however that the merging of 3 companies in the same space indicates that one, or all, of them was also not in the healthiest of shapes.

Its a shame for DGM who were always the most supportive network for smaller merchants and for me, the most helpful towards agencies.  No doubt somebody is going to start blaming the management of the company, which is natural, but we mustn’t forget the current situation is hitting everyone pretty hard.  In fact, I was surprised how few companies fell during 2009, although what we may be seeing is a delayed impact.  With I-level going under recently and now DGM, two well established companies in their chosen field, could we now be seeing the true impact of the recession as companies can no longer hold on?  Many others may be experiencing similar difficulties and desperately hoping for the market to pick up.

Infographic by PPC Blog

Scatter plot graphic by SEOmoz

Pagerank and Linkjuice Infographic by Elliance

Each time a breaking news story occurs on the web, there is a flurry of activity as people search to find out the detail, the inside scoop, or the eye witness acount.  Twitter has benefitted from this phenomenon due to its real time nature and community base, and Google wants to do the same.  Whilst people are still using search eninges to find services and goods, theres are a massive amount of search for news and articles, and the more Google can ensure it is providing the freshest, most up to date content, the better the experience for these users.

For content providers this shouldntmean  any change in rankings or traffic, as mentioned above, it isnt an algorithm change, but it should mean that when you add new content, it appears in the SERPs quicker.  It does however strengthen the need for fresh new content.  Google already rewards fresh content in certain areas and with this rollout and more of a focus on “real time” this is bound to become more prominent.

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Link Building the Hollywood Way: My latest piece for the Latitude Group blog

Building a backlink profile: Advise on building a backlink profile for your website

Widening the bottom of the funnel: Why you should focus on widening the bottom of the conversion funnel rather than obsessing about sending more in through the top.

A small number of them however have decided that the best prey are the SEO companies themselves and by leveraging the naivety of their potential customers a way to make money out of SEO companies is to offer up accreditations, rankings or verifications to help them gain new customers.  Great idea hey!? In theory yes, if these verifications had any substance behind them and weren’t based purely on commercial gain for the company providing the service.

One I have been aware of for a while is topseos.com. a company claiming to rank SEO companies on the service they provide and then supplies them with badges listing their rankings to use on their website and emails etc.   I came across them a couple of years ago and thought it would be good to get the SEO company I work for reviewed and listed so we could use it in marketing collateral, after all, looking at the criteria we ticked all the boxes to rank well.  So we contacted them to ask for a review and inclusion in their rankings and how we got included. Their response? “You need to pay” or to put more detail on it, you have to pay anything from £400 per month to £1800 a month to be considered for rankings.  Hardly sounds impartial does it!

Seoconsultants.com is in the process of calling out topseosso I will happily leave them to it. But topseos is not the only one at it, and not the only one being called out.

The latest company to enter this market is Verified SEO. Apparently a group of “industry experts” who will gladly verify you are indeed a bonafied SEO professional all for $99 a month (previously $199). This week however the world of SEO decided enough is enough and challenged verified SEO (in the form of Rishi Lakhani) to prove they really are SEO industry experts.  After all, if they were that good, we would have heard of them right? But the more the SEO community digs into the story behind verified SEO the less substance there appears to be behind their claims, and thus far, there has been no official response from the “industry experts” behind the project.  I guess they are just another bunch of SEO snake oil salesmen looking to make a quick buck off unsuspecting companies.

Id like to lend me weight behind the campaign and proclaim, that I am proud that neither I, nor my company, is a verified SEO, or a top SEO!

Update:

Verified SEO, in the form of the founder Charles Preston, have now had their say in a comment stream which can be seen here.  Charles’ argument is that Verified SEO is a legitimate service but one that was not thought out well enough.  He says the service was not meant to be any form of scam, just a legitimate verification service for SEO providers.  The service has since been discontinued after all of the controversy.

The constantly demanding client often gets what they want in the short term, they will huff and puff and in many cases their account manager will be pressured into running around like an idiot to service them.  Long term however this client is going to lose out.  When it comes to added value, client niceties, or the impending contract renewal this client isn’t going to get treated the best.  The agency will realise they are over-servicing(assuming they are) and demand a higher fee, or the account manager will begin to resent the client and deliver substandard service or at least minimal effort will be put into their work.  Ultimately the client is going to lose out.

On the flip side you have the client who leaves the agency to it, and doesn’t engage them too much in their work.  This is great from a cost efficiency stand point for the agency, but is it going to make them work hard for their cash?  Not in the long term.  Work will be put in for a while but as soon as a conflict of time occurs, or workloads increase, it is likely to be this client who misses out.

I suppose its a question of timing.  Be strong and demanding when you have to be, but make sure you respect your agencies work and the time it takes and let them get on with it.  If you are happy with your agency, don’t be demanding for the sake of it, they will only resent you for it.