Google rewards, or at least wants to reward, strong brands. In addition, other marketing efforts tend to spill over positively onto search engine optimization. It’s the small ones who have to put in a lot of effort, which is why I’d like to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to all of you who really have to work hard.
Being a large, fat company and doing SEO is easy, at least from an SEO perspective. Big companies face completely different problems that affect SEO, rather than actual SEO issues. It could be that SEO is not properly integrated, that they’re stuck with some kind of technical debt, or some other corporate-related problem. Taking positions, however, is usually not the difficult part.
A year ago, I had some conversations with Markus Renström, Head of SEO at Yahoo, and he described a rather funny situation. All we need to do is link from the homepage, and we get traffic up to our ears, he said. Compare that to a newly started comparison site. No offense to Markus or anyone else working in-house at a larger company, but the small comparison site has a completely different uphill battle.
Over my years in the industry, I’ve worked with (or against) many of the best SEO specialists in the country and the world. The ones I respect the most are undoubtedly those who have taken a small site and made it big. Hats off to all of you.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.