Tech Mentat

Is Organic Ranking as a Proxy For Loyalty

March 6, 2007 – 12:52 am

In the executive board rooms, away from the engineering and marketing pits of many web startups there is a conversation on evaluating the loyalty of users. The conversation, while important at its core, is being lead by the wrong people. Instead of being lead by web marketer, product managers and engineers, the conversation is being lead by executives, board members and VC heads. So what’s the problem with this? The problems is that the conversations coming to, what I believe, is the wrong conclusion; a result of buzzwords and a general misunderstanding of search ranking and site behavior (metrics). It has now become common for this group of individuals to equate a site’s loyalty to its organic ranking (and resulting traffic).

Is Organic Ranking a Proxy for Loyalty?

No! While some may disagree with me (and I would love to hear your opinions), I am pretty definite in my viewpoint on this question. The assumption that organic ranking (and traffic) is a measurement of a site’s loyalty is based, from the conversations I have had, on three key ideas:

1. Organic Ranking is based on users positive opinion of a site; a misunderstanding of linking and quality content algorithm.
2. Users are more willing to visit your site when ranked organically and paid marketing is merely “duping” users to visit. Consequently, they are more willing to be return visitors.
3. Users are more likely to bookmark, tag and tell a friend (word-of-mouth) if they visited your site through an organic link.

Each of these three statements shows a misunderstanding of how loyalty should be measured. The core of the first statement is based on the misunderstanding that search engine’s care about brand. There has been a lot of talk over the past few years on authority and canonical domains – this information has been pushed up to the exec level without any explanation (even a basic overview) of the key factors in an organic algorithm. Quality content, linking, site structure, gaining mindshare… these organic “votes” are factors that are somehow getting folded under “positive opinion.”

The second statement claiming that organic ranking corals the coalition of the willing and that paid marketing only serves to dupe user is completely ridiculous and unfounded. I believe the statement is based on the old thought that users who are looking for information (for something valuable) bypass paid ads and only click on organic links.

Following that logic, if users feel they are finding information that is more valuable in the organic listings then they will be more willing to return (repeat or direct).

The last statement would seem to be nothing more than an extension of the second point but like the second point, I don’t seem much logic to it all.

Unfortunately for VC’s (and those company’s looking for funding from such VC’s) is that all three assumption are bankrupt. While it is supported to state that having higher ranking (whether organically or paid) lead most user to believe that your company is a “leader” in its field (2006 iProspect User Behavior Study), it is not supported to take such information and imply that users are more willing or will have better site experience because of such ranking. There is no study to support such an assertion.

So, how do we fight back? Whether it is seeing your little startup getting a torched by a VC flamethrower in a board or whether it is witness you or your web marketing team getting drilled by the an exec team; in-house web marketers need to be prepared to fight back. I would suggest the following points to combat the idea that organic ranking is a proxy for loyalty:

1. Arm your executives with a base understanding of how site are able to rank organically. Present this information to your exec board; place this information on your company wiki; make this information readily available for those decision makers.
2. Describe the differences (and similarities) between organic and paid marketing. This one should be pretty simple but should include that there has never been any sufficient study to assert organic visits are more loyal than paid visits.
3. Differentiate your plan for gaining organic ranking, paid acquisition and increased loyalty in your project timelines. The more you can report and plan on all of these initiatives separately, the more chance you have of having them not confused by exec’s and VC’s.
4. Set expectations! Can’t say this point enough for every aspect of every part of business. Loyalty is not an overnight thing and it doesn’t just happen because you site has more traffic.

However, you want to combat this point is up to you BUT what is definite is that organic ranking is NOT a proxy for loyalty.

So how do I think loyalty is gained? Stay tuned for Part II!