Sizzle: Chapter 2: Optimization Inflation - A Preview

E-commerce SEO Book by Lou Storiale — Check out this Advanced E-commerce SEO Book on Amazon.com

This chapter of the book, Sizzle: An E-commerce Revolution - Advanced E-commerce SEO, is Optimization Inflation

A Preview:

The more algorithms and the more stringent the requirements to rank in the top spots on search engines, the more resources are required to compete online. Business owners are beginning to realize the 2.0 paradigm no longer produces revenue for organic search.

The larger the list of optimization requirements, the more companies will opt-out of investing in effective long-term SEO strategies.

We are in the middle of an optimization inflation crisis and it is causing owners of small and medium-sized businesses to reconsider using SEO as a marketing strategy.

Back to Baseline

Easy SEO and low hanging fruit do not create dramatic results.
If sites in an industry and geo-location only implement easy seo strategies, those sites are all back to baseline. Those easy tasks and strategies become table stakes to compete in that industry and geographical location. No competitive advantage is created.
As major players begin to implement more, better, and different strategies, their competition will eventually do the same. Soon, the medium-level tasks and strategies, once implemented, become table takes again.
This continues until new sites cannot compete with the big players without millions of dollars of development costs. New companies must begin with paid listings, social paid, email marketing, and good-old-fashioned public relations. This is how SEO dies.

The best way to compete with the big players is staring most e-commerce site owners in the face.

Good content is comprehensive yet has no fluff.

Optimize your money pages using function-driven content for immediate and profitable results. The competition will be left scratching their heads, but still chasing the next low-hanging fruit outlined in some blog post by a fake SEO guru. Every two years, the cycle begins again.

Major changes began with SSL (https://) requirements, then site speed, then mobile indexing, then a new algorithm just for reviews, then site speed again changed. This does not include the normal semi-annual algorithm updates or the small daily changes and testing.

Keeping up with all of these changes, just to remain at baseline, may not seem worth it for many small e-commerce business owners.

Small business owners cannot afford to update their site any longer. New companies opening after 2020 are competing with businesses that were established in the last century. Competing for top spots on search engines can be futile against well-established companies, especially during the holidays.

New companies may decide to invest in paid digital and traditional marketing, leaving their site’s optimization anemic at best.

This writing style takes knowledge, skill, experience, and commitment.

A $20,000 SEO investment has led small business owners to come face-to-face with the law of diminishing returns. When it takes $30,000-$50,000 for a small business to build a custom website with useful content listed among the top 2 pages, they may likely decide to spend that money elsewhere. That is what we are seeing in the industry at all levels, not just small businesses.

Optimization inflation requires much greater resources to create first page Google results just to compete, let alone place in the top 3 spots for hundreds or thousands of phrases.

Optimization Inflation is causing the motivation and commitment to fully invest in a comprehensive strategy to wane. New business owners are mistakenly interpreting optimization inflation as the futility of SEO and choosing traditional marketing strategies instead.

Chapter 3: Indirect Content Marketing Is Dead

This is the new paradigm of e-commerce search engine optimization.

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