The infinite dichotomy is whether the domain of search is a content or technology proposition.

For Google it’s a technology proposition: that’s their mandate and they adhere to that tenet with everything they do. For Yahoo, content is the play.

And despite the market value, in truth for each company, it’s a winning proposition.

Nut it down a little, to your site or my site. How you play it generally depends on the budget at hand. With little or no budget, the dependency tends towards content to garner stickiness and ranking.

With budget, it tends towards paid search and a technology play.

Coming from a marketing background, I personally tend towards and far more thoroughly enjoy content versus technology. No dummy book in the world that can help me on most tech issues… I don’t get it till I get it and that’s been the story of my math sciences life from the outset.

But the one thing I do know is IF IT AIN’T BROKE - DON’T FIX IT.

I’ve watched two companies in the past seven days give up their organic rankings, not because they changed their web site, but because they changed their technology.

And we’re talking bye bye, so long, see ya, adios… rankings. Gone. No amount of work in the world will help them recover, and frankly no amount of paid advertising will help them regain the ground they’ve lost as they are pretty strong in the paid market already.

Sad.

But also interesting.

It goes back to the ebay thing where you can potentially afford to risk paid advertising, but with organic where the propensity to click is 8x times that of paid, it’s a position that few I know can ill-afford to lose.

Moral of the story: IF UNDER ANY CONDITION YOU ARE CONSIDERING RE-ENGINEERING YOUR SITE, ASK YOURSELF WHY and what the true cost is.

Have a good one.

~The (SEP) Guy

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