What Happened to SEO, and Why Does it Matter to the CEO?

In 1994, a man named Brian Pinkerton developed the first capable web crawler. His amazing software tool could generate the top 25 web-page results, which was quite an achievement at the time. 

In the late 1990s, early search-engine players like Excite, Lycos, Yahoo, and AltaVista used custom web crawlers like Pinkerton’s to succeed in the content-driven search-engine business. Consequently, the late 90s were full of competition and exciting search-engine optimization (SEO) breakthroughs, especially following Google’s release of a new page rank tool called Link Juice. (The following year, it rolled out a new model for paid links, a financial sensation that became widely known as AdWords.) 

By 2003, Google had to crack down on “Google bombers,” who were gaming the SEO system. In response to these “Google bombers,” the company released another new product called AdSense. And with a number of companies gaming SEO with spam in 2004, Google released the “nofollow” tag, which was soon adopted by its competitors as well. It didn’t take long before “nofollow” — along with Link Juice — became the de-facto tool for ranking pages. In 2005, Google released Google Analytics, and later that year, when SEO gamers started abusing “nofollow” to increase their page ranking, Google cracked down by limiting the scope of Link Juice within the “nofollow” tool. Google completed this successful trifecta by releasing a new “sandboxing” tool, which marked the beginning of the end for all other major search engines, and the rise in power of Google SEO rankings. 

From 1995 to 2005, what was at first a thriving SEO marketplace with multiple competitors shrank down to a mere few, and the rest is history. In less than two decades, Google has become the 800-pound gorilla in the SEO market, with the bulk of the global market share. The company’s rapid rise to stardom is nothing short of phenomenal, especially since there are now only two types of SEO marketing companies: those that abide by Google’s guidelines, and those that attempt to game the algorithm. Google, of course, responds to the market by changing its algorithms, rewarding companies that develop brands, and put their customers first. But more importantly, Google rewards the companies that use its tools. It rewards businesses that create valuable content and punishes companies that strive to rise to the top through clever tricks and schemes. 

We’ve seen this tech disruption trend before — consider Betamax versus VHS, or Blackberry versus iPhone. So, what phenomenon distinguishes the winners from the losers in the tech industry? As was the case with Betamax versus VHS, there was more to it than the fact that the latter was a superior product. With the iPhone, for example, Apple confirmed its status as a closed technology garden. But if it’s not technical superiority or open technology, then how do these tech companies become major players? What turns the market against these outliers so quickly? In some cases, it takes less than a decade to do so.

Although it isn’t entirely obvious, the fulcrum that generates a certain level of success in the technology industry is the balance between two sets of common factors. Consider public consumers as the two-headed mythical Roman god Janus Bifrons. Janus presided over war and peace, over the beginning and end of conflict. He is usually depicted as having two distinct faces, one representing the future and the other the past. Well, the habits of modern consumers are a balance between the future, which I define here as choice and freedom, and the past, which I define as convenience and reliability. As consumers, human beings are generally willing to give up enormous freedoms — of both choice and privacy — to gain convenience and reliability. Think about it. We all voluntarily carry GPS tracking devices with us, and these devices not only monitor our locations, but they track pretty much everything we do online. Something definitely rings true in the popular colloquial expression that “Google knows more about me than my spouse.”

So, to borrow a Malcolm Gladwell expression, what causes that “tipping point” when freedom and choice override convenience and reliability (or vice versa) while consumers are in the process of adopting a new technology? 

Some of my contemporaries would argue that through regulation, the government plays a significant role in picking industry winners and losers. It’s tough to argue with them on that point, but I think it’s much subtler, but arguably quite obvious, than that.

Information-technology communication companies tend to disrupt about every 30 years: the telegraph in 1840, the telephone in 1870, the radio in 1900, the TV in 1930, cable TV in 1960, and the Internet in 1990. This means that the next major leap is scheduled to occur in 2020, which is something for which we should obviously be prepared. Many major players are already laying the foundation for this next generation, and that’s quite literally it. You see, the next generation, a new group of younger souls riled by their loss of privacy and lack of choice will spontaneously move to a freer, more diverse platform. And over time, this platform will morph into the familiar and reliable Janus tradeoff in which freedom and choice give way to convenience and reliability — often as the result of government intervention.

So, what is a CEO to do if you find yourself in one of these “loser” industries? The answer wasn’t obvious to Yahoo for a long while. 

Certainty has become the key driver of corporate success. The question is, “Will you see the competition coming?” Companies need a predictive disruptive-technology analysis tool to provide a strategic roadmap that will keep them ahead of the pack. Unlike any other product, this roadmap offers the knowledge on how to specifically protect and leverage information to one’s advantage; it is a means of expanding and simultaneously future-proofing your organization. C-level suites and executive boards need a clear vision and an actionable plan to reduce risk, increase revenue, and ensure corporate success.

Bill Abrams is a business consultant that specializes in IT security, social media, and data science. Contact him at babrams@nsaco.com