There's a saying in Japan: ただより高いものはない (romanization: 'tada yori takai mono ha nai'). A literal translation of that might be: "there's nothing more expensive than free stuff". At face value, that seems like a non sequitur. Free stuff is supposed to be free, but the implication here is that it's not. This is probably why the saying gets more commonly equated to the old American adage: "there's no such thing as free lunch".
It's a decent translation, but there's an outward cynicism in the Japanese that doesn't really come through. "No such thing as free lunch" is generally used in the context of "you can't get something for nothing". The Japanese equivalent goes well beyond this; it says, "free stuff comes at a tremendous cost". It's a judgment upon human nature really: people who are willing to give you free stuff often have ulterior motives, and they're looking for a return on their investment that outweighs that initial cost. If anything, the Japanese saying is where "no such thing as free lunch" meets "beware of Greeks bearing gifts."
Enter Google--stage left
In 2010, running a blog and marketing site for my Tokyo business, I was able to find my way to the fist spot on the first page of Google results for several keyword phrases. It wasn't a rags to riches kind of deal (just because your site ranks well doesn't necessarily mean leads will convert); nonetheless, I noted a considerable improvement in the number of new customers coming into my business from the web. What did it cost me? In terms of actual dollars (or yen, rather): nothing. In terms of what we call sweat-equity, it was a simple labor: I committed myself to providing content where others in the same industry hadn't; I optimized my site so that Google could see this and rank it accordingly. Google, as it still does now, offered any number of free tools to help me accomplish this feat.
It made a notable splash. I recall an industry leader pointing to my internet success at a national industry conference. This was a gathering of both potential customers and industry peers. So, as you might guess, it wasn't long before that first page on Google started to warm up: one of my peers decided to pay actual money for that first-page/first-result spot. I remember combing over their site to sum up my competition--it was complete garbage: no quality content; no quality UX; no nothing. "These guys used to reside on page 2!"... and now they were vying for my clientele.
Thus, the bidding war began. I cracked open my wallet, as did others in the industry, and it was no longer enough to simply provide content where others hadn't--I now had to pay for it. Well... actually... I didn't have to. I was compelled to. After savoring number one, who wants to just sit back and let themselves be dethroned? It was a huge blow to my ego--to see the content I had custom tailored to my clients take a back seat to the highest bidder.
Reality check: the value of quality content and SEO, as they relate to page rank, is greatly diminished if someone else can buy their way into the top search results.
I'll be honest: I've been jaded on the concept of SEO ever since. Despite all the changes in the last 10 years, though, the one thing that appears to remain constant is that "there's nothing more expensive than free stuff". Google is gonna be Google; Facebook is gonna be Facebook; and anyone offering you free tools to promote your business on the web is doing so with only one goal in mind: their own profit.
Trouble in River City
For me, this raises an important question: how much time should you, or I, really be spending on Search Engine Optimization? As much as I'd like to wag my finger at Google (and all the other entities helping promote businesses), we businesses need them. Call them a necessary evil (grab a tissue if you need one); the "free" internet isn't really free. So, how do we maximize SEO return and minimize the cost of promotional platforms offering "free" exposure?
The first step is seeing SEO for what it is. So long as there are competitors in your industry, SEO will never be the magical mechanism by which you get a free ticket to search engine stardom. In a recent sit down with industry insiders here in Albuquerque, it was put forth that 30/70 is the right balance between SEO and paid advertising: 30% SEO; 70% paid. I don't think those numbers are fixed, necessarily; I think they're meant to simply reflect two realities in 2020: 1). quality content isn't entirely unimportant, and 2). you'll want to take budgeting for paid advertising seriously.
The True Value of SEO
I'm on board with this--particularly that 30% figure. Not because I think organic reach is your savior, obviously, but because SEO relates directly to content quality and user experience. Most of the things we do to make our sites easily consumable for search bots also help to make them easily consumable for humans (note: the same could be said of accessibility/WCAG). For example, neither humans nor bots want to spend more time than necessary trying to figure out what your site is about. From a user experience perspective, it's been well established that sites that are easy to engage with are simply better at creating conversions. So, if you view SEO as a mechanism for providing coherent and focused content, then, this 30% figure is more than justifiable. My Tokyo competitors may have paid their way onto the first page of results. However, I'd wager that my site was better than theirs at converting leads exactly because it was properly optimized: the focus was clear and the quality of the content was high.
Thanks in large part to Google, there are now endless resources out there that can help you figure out how to optimize your site in this manner. I don't have the time or space to go through all of the things you could do, but if you're unfamiliar with the SEO game, here are some concretes that relate to both user experience and indexability:
- Keywords in <title> tags: does your page title relate to the focus of the page?
- Keywords in <h1> tags: do first level headers relate to the focus of the page?
- Appropriate alt attributes for images: do images have descriptive tags for users with accessibility needs? do search engines know what your images are about?
- Descriptively appropriate link copy: can you think of something better than "click here" for your link text?
- Keyword density: how often does a page use terms related to the focus of the page?
It's all pretty straight forward, and if you're running a CMS like Drupal or WordPress, there are any number of modules and plugins that can help you take charge of these kinds of things. It can sometimes seem rather technical, but I can attest to the fact that the bulk of the SEO burden really falls on the content editor--whoever is responsible for creating your web content. On the development side, there isn't all that much to do.
Nonetheless, I see any number of companies out there offering SEO "products" these days: infographs, reports, plugins, dashboards, etc. Some of them will even run a "scan" of your site and give you a "free" analysis. In their analysis, they'll likely highlight the technical elements of SEO that are missing from your site. Technical lingo can be intimidating for anyone not familiar with the concepts, and this is what SEO companies bank on; they want you to think you need their help in tackling your SEO project. The one thing their analysis won't be able to do, though, is account for the human element--the part of SEO requiring you to ensure your content is properly focused on target audiences. Don't get me wrong--SEO tools can certainly help highlight problems; you just won't be able to solve those problems solely with automated scans or fancy dashboards.
Lastly--just remember: "there's nothing more expensive than free stuff".