Why Small Ball Is Over
Ever get to a party as it is wrapping up? A friend asked me to help a website win a two keyword battle today. I like to help people, but I moved the work to another friend. Small ball, the kind of tit for tat Internet marketing the client wants, is over killed by Google's brilliant engineer Navneet Panda.Panda changed Goole's algorithm. Once Google can truly SEE our websites optimization tricks are over, done, finished. The tough idea for non-Interent marketers to grasp is the magnitude of the change.
What is really confusing is taking a quick look over the two keywords the friend of a friend wants to win and they can be won, at least for a time, the old way.
It is not that I can't play the old game, I just don't see any reason to do so because small ball is over. Small ball is over because:
- Google wants the old game to be over.
- The cost of playing BIG have dropped.
- Imagination Is The Real Barrier
What Google Wants
If you asked me THE most important idea behind my Internet marketing team's ability to make more than $30M online I would answer more simply than you think - DO WHAT GOOGLE TELLS YOU TO DO.
Google's signals can be murky and hard to understand, but not this time. This time Google has taken the unprecedented step of putting "over optimizer" offenders in stocks on the courtyard steps. Google realized they messed up. Their arcane SEO rules became an end unto themselves.
We played to Google and away from GREATNESS. Kudos to Google for righting the web's course even if it made things that used to be TRUE now FALSE and punishable.
Stay with me and don't think I am trying to sell you a used car with magic math. Here is how expensive using TIME to play small ball can be:
Playing BIG Costs Have Dropped
The difference between playing for things that don't matter and creating AWESOMENESS is about $10K (give or take). The final price tag may SEEM bigger, but not when you calculate things like the net present value of money, the nonrefundable TIME you put in and the difference in the return.Stay with me and don't think I am trying to sell you a used car with magic math. Here is how expensive using TIME to play small ball can be:
So the short term costs of playing a game that doesn't exist anymore (Thinking Small) is a -$500,000 loss. Add the difference over years of saving $10K (or the rough real equivalent) costs millions. Life is too short to be this stupid (lol).
Imagination Is The Real Objection
How did I get so wise? I got sick and I've put in more than Gladwell's 10,000 hours as an Internet marketer. You don't make millions online by mistake (a million maybe lol). You make millions by learning FAST and eliminating as much EGO as is possible (still working on this).
Hearing "cancer" and your name in the same sentence changes you. I was never patient, now I have NO PATIENCE for certain kinds of stupidity, NONE. I value TIME more than my money. After some point, a point I've reached, money is just a pain in the you know where.
I'm not RICH or anything, but I live on about $40K a year give or take. Life expectancy with the leukemia I have is about 10 years and I am in year eight, so money doesn't matter anymore. Here is the TOUGH idea I want to share with anyone reading this post.
Money doesn't matter to you either. If you are smart enough to be reading ScentTrail Marketing (lol), then you will have more work and money than you will be able to spend. Money is off the table for you too.
So what is the problem? Why are people so reluctant to speak and act on truth? Lack of imagination is the best explanation I've come up with. We fear the unknown. I freak customers out so much I live in a tiny closet and am only allowed to talk to customers who find me in some direct way (lol).
I don't mind. In fact I just turned down a great job as a Chief Marketing Officer because Atlantic BT has been amazing to me and we are going to work on curing cancer together (the most important use of the money I so diligently saved for "retirement":).
I appreciate how special it is to have an employer who hired me despite knowing I have cancer and accepts how having cancer has changed me (less patient and in a hurry). Atlantic BT rocks and is where I will finish my career if they will have me :). I plan to "retire" in 2014.
My message to you is simple - BE BOLD! Find AWESOME and live there.
So what is the problem? Why are people so reluctant to speak and act on truth? Lack of imagination is the best explanation I've come up with. We fear the unknown. I freak customers out so much I live in a tiny closet and am only allowed to talk to customers who find me in some direct way (lol).
I don't mind. In fact I just turned down a great job as a Chief Marketing Officer because Atlantic BT has been amazing to me and we are going to work on curing cancer together (the most important use of the money I so diligently saved for "retirement":).
I appreciate how special it is to have an employer who hired me despite knowing I have cancer and accepts how having cancer has changed me (less patient and in a hurry). Atlantic BT rocks and is where I will finish my career if they will have me :). I plan to "retire" in 2014.
My message to you is simple - BE BOLD! Find AWESOME and live there.
If you aren't GREAT figure out how to become so because GREAT are the only people left at the table, great is the cost of the poker we play inside the largest content marketing network the world has ever imagined much less created. Don't waste another second playing SMALL when there is no excuse other than imagination and its cousin COURAGE to play and win BIG.
Rock on!
Marty
Follow @ScentTsrail
Email: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol
Follow Digital Revolutions on Scoop.it
Join ScentTrail Marketing (on the upper left)
Rock on!
Marty
- Philip Stephano Marty, I'm not an SEO guy. Can you go to square one explain exactly what you mean by "small ball" SEO? Also what is "big ball?" Is big ball content generation and propagation? Thanks, P
- Martin Smith Glad to and you are already half way there. Small Ball SEO is fighting in the trenches for a listing here or there and so losing sight of what is important - creating real meaning and value for people not search engine spiders. Google created a closed loop solipsism that their Panda algorithm is meant to fix.
Big Ball is, at its most grand, saving the world in some meaningful collective way. Content generation with purpose. Community with purpose. Campaigns with purpose. Purpose can be self serving as long as it isn't cloaked in something else. The real difference is Big Ball is inclusive, combines content creation and curation and is open via either open source or APIs to evolution and change.Thanks to Philip for asking a great question on Facebook. M
Stay In Touch, Share Your Ideas
If you have ideas and want to help develop ScentTrail Marketing leave a comment or do one of these:Follow @ScentTsrail
Email: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol
Follow Digital Revolutions on Scoop.it
Join ScentTrail Marketing (on the upper left)
I love this article and am thrilled SEO bots have gotten smarter, even though it changed the whole game.
ReplyDeleteI recently spoke with a new business owner who previously worked for someone I SEO'ed a site for years ago. She was busy buying "good" urls and putting keywords everywhere, and all the rest of the standard trickery we used to use. I told her not to bother.
Her brand has big potential to connect with customers.
I told her:
- Passionately talk about what you are doing. Use your phone and blog to document in the moment. THAT'S how to create frequent, relevant content - and it is awesome for customers!
- Use keyword research not to work the system, but as a way to better understand your customers needs.
- There is a reason you are often asked online to "Please prove you're not a robot." LOL Network in REAL life. Some of the highest quality links I've seen to my sites are from people I've met in person at industry events. They connect with me online as an extension of a real, human relationship. We blog about each other and share each other's posts.
As you so eloquently discussed in a previous post, your site is simply a vehicle to amplify the magic you are creating in the real world. SEO isn't worth it anymore and probably never was beyond hard-won, short-term rewards.
Build greatness in the real world and Google will (FINALLY) reward you. Google got better. Now it's our turn!
Marty,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I too have come to a point where I want to have long-term, meaningful gain/change/impact, not just short-term monetary bumps.
I recently heard an interview where the interviewee said the goal of their company is to solve a particular tech problem forever. It's a problem any site that requires a login faces - he said, why the hell does everyone build this every single time. We can solve this once and for all. Now that's creating real value that will last a long time.
Let's all think about how we can solve problems once and for all. When we do that, we actually WIN the battle, not just sit in first place for a short period of time only to be passed by someone else later.
I think I may have rambled more than I intended, but I hope you get my point. :-) Keep up the great work.
Molly and Doug,
ReplyDeleteGreat comments. Molly is one of the most passionate people I know and she is building an amazing company at Crafts Weekly (@CraftsWeekly). I love Molly's comment about using keyword research to understand how customers THINK and TALK about your product. Molly is more than correct.
Doug speaks to the tension between visionary ideas vs. the incremental improvement. True visionaries are rare, but the only things worth doing now are bold, courageous things. Incremental improvements will come from places where people work too hard for too little. Our role, as Americans, is to see and create the next big cool thing. That is what makes life worth living, that is the quest worth taking, that is the love worth finding.
Great comments. Thanks. Marty
great article Marty - you are an inspiration. question on the math - does time cost really go from $500K in small ball to zero in big ball? How is that? Or did I miss something.
ReplyDeletethanks!
Greg
Good catch Greg. I loaded this twice and somehow the cost got zeroed out. Will fix.
ReplyDelete