SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone
searchengineland.com
searchengineland.com
Yes, there is only so much room at the top for any given keyword like 'buy Viagra'. Also, there is only so much room in the market for a product like Viagra. (I'm using Viagra because of it's infamous relationship to search engine spam.)
This is true of any market. You have market share, and you have your slice of the pie. Most marketers, entrepreneurs, and economists have gotten past this concept with the acceptance of creating value, or the 'growing pie'. But somehow, the general sentiment towards SEO doesn't make the connection. After all, if you're not in the top few rankings on the SERPs, you're not getting clicks. It makes apparent sense that there is only room for 3-4 'winners' for a given keyword.
The problem with this is that good SEO involves a traffic strategy that goes beyond the single most obvious keyword. There is an unlimited supply of keywords to choose from. Maybe 'buy Viagra' is too lofty a keyword to search for, but 3 minutes of brainstorming could produce other avenues to attract traffic. SEO isn't just the process of optimizing for a keyword, it's in choosing the most relevant keywords to capture the market, including the unrealized market.
If you are marketing your startup based on your competitive advantages or differentiating factors, then there is room to differentiate and win with your SEO. It's time for an example:
Lets say there is only one type of car in the world. There is also a global car market of say, 100 million cars annually. To the casual observer, any new car maker would be competing in a zero-sum game. The only way to sell cars is to take car sales away from the one type of car maker. If you're selling the exact same car, then you have doomed your business. What about a different car? How about a 2 door car. Maybe it gets better gas mileage. Now you have your competitive advantage. Your marketing strategy is now to emphasize how you are different. Some portion of the car market will want your different car. They may even specifically look for a '2 door car', which your one competitor doesn't offer. Imagine an SEO strategy for this new car. You would probably pick keywords that emphasize your differentiating factors ('2 door car', for example). Why would your competitor be optimizing for '2 door car'? You've expanded the market for cars, and similarly have found an uncompetitive set of keywords.
My point in all of this is to say that while from an extremely narrow point of view, SEO could be considered a zero-sum game, but when you broaden your perspective it becomes evident that it's no different than any marketing for a business. In business it's possible to discover and meet new customers without taking away your competitor's customers, and similarly you can optimize and win on keywords without a ranking arms race with the other competitors. Optimize based on your competitive advantages and differentiating factors and you'll do well. If you don't have any such advantages, you've got bigger problems than poor SEO.
Chris is right -- anyone doing a startup better have another way to acquire users than focusing on SEO and organic traffic. The alternative is being black hat and throwing user experience out the window, which is his point.
It seems like the people who dislike SEO either a) high a high burn rate and can't wait 18 mos to get a payoff, or b) have investors who can't stand putting money into a marketing activity with such high uncertainty.
Bottom line-- it's no different from PR. High initial expense, uncertain payoff, but sometimes you get monsterous ROI.
It's a rare company indeed that's been link building on the Web since 1991.