Digital Déjà Vu

"I predict we’ll see companies pop up, make lots of money offering these services and then disappear or pivot when their clients no longer see the impact, or worse stop getting listed entirely."

It’s funny how history repeats itself.

When I started in Digital Marketing back in 2000 (I’m thinking SEO specifically), we put words we wanted to be listed for in the same colour as the background of the website. Although not exactly manipulative, perhaps it border lined good/bad practice.

That worked, until it didn’t.

Then we moved into an era of Doorway pages. Horrible, keyword heavy pages that sat in front of the website you were trying to get ranked. These got the listings, clients wanted and the user clicked through to the client’s website.

That worked, until it didn’t.

Over the last 25 years there have been a multitude of ‘practices’ like this which SEO’s have used to get their clients listed. Some we played with, others we didn’t touch with a bargepole.

Here’s the interesting thing.

I’ve started to witness this happening again in the generative engine optimisation space (i.e. getting listed in LLMs). People have figured out the quick wins and to be fair, while this is all so new, they probably work! I’m sure if you drown Reddit in content about your brand you’ll probably get picked up in certain LLM’s because we know that’s a website which has done deals and opened up its API for people like Google to scour.

The bigger question I have is whether these sorts of practices are legitimate, sustainable, long term tactics or short term snake oil which we’ll be doing our best to reverse in years to come as the LLMS wise up and potentially even punish people for doing so (anyone remember Interflora back in 2013? https://www.wired.com/story/interflora-disappears-from-google/)

Personally I think we’ve seen this before. I predict we’ll see companies pop up, make lots of money offering these services and then disappear or pivot when their clients no longer see the impact, or worse stop getting listed entirely.

I’ve always been a fan of long-term thinking and brand building. Ok its perhaps not as exciting or doesn’t give us the instant gratification and ROI figures we all desire but equally I haven’t had to deal with client disasters over the years, such as the one mentioned above.

My advice (as its always been) is to concentrate on building your brand and credibility across the internet. This is just as important for personal brand as it is for your company.

Who are your leaders? Where do they create content? Who do they write for?

How are you building your company’s brand and creds? Same applies. Creating content offsite is going to be super important in this new world but that’s always been the case, there’s just a bigger lens on it now.

While I can’t categorically say that these practices we’re starting to see are really bad, they do share an awful lot of similarities to the SEO practices of the past and for those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember them, I see it as our duty to tell those stories in case history repeats itself.

Ultimately, you’ll need to make your own minds up but what I would say is that rather than being seduced by these practices, do your research. Think carefully about the long term implications and potential brand reputation challenges that can come with short term gratification.

Just be careful is all I’m saying.