{"id":822,"date":"2017-07-06T12:46:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T12:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/07\/06\/what-we-learned-from-seo-the-movie\/"},"modified":"2020-03-02T17:35:34","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T17:35:34","slug":"what-we-learned-from-seo-the-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/07\/06\/what-we-learned-from-seo-the-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"What we learned from SEO: The Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Have you ever wished for a nostalgic retrospective on the heyday of SEO, featuring some of the biggest names in the world of search, all condensed into a 40-minute video with an admittedly cheesy title?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If so, you\u2019re in luck, because there\u2019s a documentary just for you: it\u2019s called <em>SEO: The Movie<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SEO THE MOVIE (OFFICIAL TRAILER) COMING JUNE 20th, 2017\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IV50D9qpGNU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>The trailer for SEO: The Movie<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ignitevisibility.com\/seo-movie\/\"><em>SEO: The Movie<\/em><\/a> is a new documentary, created by digital marketing agency Ignite Visibility, which explores the origin story of search and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/05\/31\/image-optimization-for-seo\/\">SEO<\/a>, as told by several of its pioneers. It\u2019s a 40-minute snapshot of the search industry that is and was, focusing predominantly on its rock-and-roll heyday, with a glimpse into the future and what might become of <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/09\/25\/qa-with-mozs-sarah-bird-and-rob-bucci\/\">SEO<\/a> in the years to come.<\/p>\n<p>The movie is a fun insight into where <a href=\"https:\/\/sewprod.wpenginepowered.com\/2019\/06\/14\/five-backlink-analysis-tools\/\">SEO<\/a> came from and who we have to thank for it, but some of its most interesting revelations are contained within stories of the at times fraught relationship between Google and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/12\/14\/how-much-should-seo-cost\/\">SEO consultants<\/a>, as well as between Google and business owners who depended on it for their traffic. For all that <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/07\/26\/what-the-evolution-of-search-can-teach-marketers-about-digital-transformation\/\">search has evolved<\/a> since Google was founded nearly two decades ago, this tension hasn\u2019t gone away.<\/p>\n<p>It was also interesting to hear some thoughts about what might become of search and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/09\/10\/image-link-building-tips\/\">SEO<\/a> several years down the line from those who\u2019d been around since the beginning \u2013 giving them a unique insight into the bigger picture of how search has changed, and is still changing.<\/p>\n<p>So what were the highlights of <em>SEO: The Movie<\/em>, and what did we learn from watching it?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The stars of SEO<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The story of <em>SEO: The Movie<\/em> is told jointly by an all-star cast of industry veterans from the early days of search and SEO (the mid-90s through to the early 2000s), with overarching narration by John Lincoln, the CEO of Ignite Visibility.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/author\/danny.sullivan\">Danny Sullivan<\/a>, the founder of<a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/05\/21\/no-need-for-google-12-alternative-search-engines-in-2018\/\"> Search Engine <\/a>Watch (this very website!) and co-founder of Search Engine Land; Rand Fishkin, the \u2018Wizard of Moz\u2019; Rae Hoffman a.k.a\u00a0&#8216;Sugarrae&#8217;, CEO of PushFire and one of the original affiliate marketers; Brett Tabke, founder of Pubcon and Webmaster World; Jill Whalen, the former CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of Search Engine Marketing New England; and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/author\/barry.schwartz\">Barry Schwartz<\/a>, CEO of RustyBrick and founder of Search Engine Roundtable.<\/p>\n<p>The documentary also features a section on former Google frontman Matt Cutts, although Cutts himself doesn\u2019t appear in the movie in person.<\/p>\n<p>Each of them tells the tale of how they came to the search industry, which is an intriguing insight into how people became involved in such an unknown, emerging field. While search and SEO turned over huge amounts of revenue in the early days \u2013 Lincoln talks about \u201caffiliates who were making millions of dollars a year\u201d by figuring out how to boost search rankings \u2013 there was still relatively little known about the industry and how it worked.<\/p>\n<p>Danny Sullivan, for instance, was a newspaper journalist who made the leap to the web <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/02\/06\/using-python-to-recover-seo-site-traffic-part-one\/\">development<\/a> in 1995, and began writing about search \u201cjust because [he] really wanted to get some decent answers to questions about how <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/02\/25\/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines\/\">search engines<\/a> work\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Jill Whalen came to SEO through a parenting website she set up, after she set out to bring more traffic to her website through search engines and figured out how to use keywords to make her site rank higher.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2017\/07\/parenting-keywords.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-68755\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2017\/07\/parenting-keywords-1024x576.png\" alt=\"Still from SEO: The Move showing a screen with a HTML paragraph tag, followed by the word 'parenting'.\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Rae Hoffman started out in the \u2018long-distance space\u2019, making modest amounts from ranking for long-distance terms, before she struck gold by creating a website for a friend selling diet pills which ranked in the top 3 search results for several relevant search terms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was probably my biggest \u2018holy shit\u2019 moment,\u201d she recalls. \u201cMy first commission check for the first month of those rankings was more than my then-husband made in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rand Fishkin, the \u2018Wizard of Moz\u2019, relates the heart-rending story of how he and his mother initially struggled with debt in the early 2000s when Moz was still just a blog, before getting his big break at the Search Engine Strategies conference and signing his first major client.<\/p>\n<p>The stories of these industry pioneers give an insight into the huge, growing, world-changing phenomenon that was SEO in the early days, back when Google, Lycos, Yahoo and others were scrambling to gain the biggest index, and Google would \u201cdo the dance\u201d every five to eight weeks and update its algorithms, giving those clever or lucky enough to rank high a steady stream of income until the next update.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/01\/09\/which-google-algorithm-changes-impacted-marketers-most-in-2016-and-what-can-we-expect-from-2017\/\">Google\u2019s algorithm updates<\/a> have always been important, but as later sections of the documentary show, certain algorithms had a disproportionate impact on businesses which Google perhaps should have done more to mitigate.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Google and webmasters: It\u2019s complicated<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>\u201cLarry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] were fairly antagonistic to SEOs,\u201d Brett Tabke recalls. \u201cThe way I understood it, Matt [Cutts] went to Larry and said\u2026 \u2018We need to have an outreach program for webmasters.\u2019 He really reached out to us and laid out the welcome mat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Almost everyone in the search industry knows the name of <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/sew\/opinion\/2339370\/googles-matt-cutts-on-seo-a-retrospective-2011-2013\">Matt Cutts<\/a>, the former head of Google\u2019s webspam team who was, for many years, the public face of Google. Cutts became the go-to source of information on Google updates and algorithm changes, and could generally be relied upon to give an authoritative explanation of what was affecting websites\u2019 ranking changes and why.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2017\/07\/Matt-Cutts.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-68754\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2017\/07\/Matt-Cutts-1024x658.png\" alt=\"Still from SEO: The Movie showing Matt Cutts holding a whiteboard marker next to a blank whiteboard, mid-explanation of a concept. The credit in the bottom right corner reads 'Source: YouTube\/Google Webmasters'.\" width=\"624\" height=\"401\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Matt Cutts in an explanatory video for Google Webmasters<\/em><\/p>\n<p>However, even between Matt Cutts and the SEO world, things weren\u2019t all sunshine and roses. Rand Fishkin reveals in <em>SEO: The Movie<\/em> how Cutts would occasionally contact him and request that he remove certain pieces of information, or parts of tools, that he deemed too revealing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe at first had a very friendly professional relationship, for several years,\u201d he recollects. \u201cThen I think Matt took the view that some of the transparency that I espoused, and that we were putting out there on Moz, really bothered him, and bothered Google. Occasionally I\u2019d get an email from him saying, \u2018I wish you wouldn\u2019t write about this\u2026 I wish you wouldn\u2019t invite this person to your conference\u2026\u2019 And sometimes stronger than that, like \u2013 \u2018You need to remove this thing from your tool, or we will ban you.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve written previously about the impact of the <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/05\/02\/should-google-be-more-transparent-with-its-updates\/\">lack of transparency surrounding Google\u2019s algorithm updates<\/a> and speculated whether Google owes it to SEOs to be more honest and accountable. The information surrounding Google\u2019s updates has become a lot murkier since Matt Cutts left the company in 2014 (while Cutts didn\u2019t formally resign until December 2016, he was on leave for more than two years prior to that) with the lack of a clear spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p>But evidently, even during Cutts\u2019 tenure with Google, Google had a transparency problem.<\/p>\n<p>In the documentary, Fishkin recalls the general air of mystery that surrounded the workings of search engines in the early days, with each company highly protective of its secrets.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe search engines themselves \u2013 Google, Microsoft, Yahoo \u2013 were all incredibly secretive about how their algorithms worked, how their engines worked\u2026 I think that they felt it was sort of a proprietary trade secret that helped them maintain a competitive advantage against one another. As a result, as a practitioner, trying to keep up with the search engines \u2026 was incredibly challenging.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This opaqueness surrounding Google\u2019s algorithms persisted, even as Google grew far more dominant in the space and arguably had much less to fear from being overtaken by competitors. And as Google\u2019s dominance grew, the impact of major algorithm changes became more severe.<\/p>\n<p><em>SEO: The Movie <\/em>looks back on some of Google\u2019s most significant updates, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/tag\/panda\/\">Panda<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/tag\/penguin\/\">Penguin<\/a>, and details how they impacted the industry at the time. One early update, the so-called \u2018Florida update\u2019, specifically took aim at tactics that SEOs were using to manipulate search rankings, sending many high-ranking websites \u201cinto free-fall\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Barry Schwartz describes how \u201cmany, many retailers\u201d at the time of the Florida update suddenly found themselves with \u201czero sales\u201d and facing bankruptcy. And to add insult to injury, the update was never officially confirmed by Google.<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward to 2012, when Google deployed the initial Penguin update that targeted link spam. Once again, this was an update that hit SEOs who had been employing these tactics in order to rank very hard \u2013 and moreover, hit their client businesses. But because of the huge delay between one Penguin update and the next, businesses which changed their ways and went on the metaphorical straight and narrow still weren\u2019t able to recover.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a consultant, I had companies calling me that were hit by Penguin, and had since cleaned up all of their <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/03\/12\/social-media-how-does-it-affect-seo\/\">backlinks<\/a>,\u201d says Rae Hoffman.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThey would contact me and say, \u2018We\u2019re still not un-penalized, so we need you to look at it to see what we missed.\u2019 And I would tell them, \u2018You didn\u2019t miss anything. You have to wait for Google to push the button again.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would get calls from companies that told me that they had two months before they were going to have to close the doors and start firing employees; and they were waiting on a Penguin update. Google launched something that was extremely punitive; that was extremely devastating; that threw a lot of baby out with the bathwater\u2026 and then chose not to update it again for almost <em>two years<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These recollections from veteran SEOs show that Google\u2019s relationship with webmasters has always been fraught with difficulties. Whatever you think about Google\u2019s right to protect its trade secrets and take actions against those manipulating its algorithms, SEOs were the ones who drove the discussion around what Google was doing in its early days, analyzing it and spreading the word, reporting news stories, featuring Google and other search companies\u00a0at their conferences.<\/p>\n<p>To my mind at least, it seems that\u00a0it would have been fairer for Google to develop a more open and reciprocal relationship with webmasters and SEOs, which would have\u00a0prevented situations like the ones above from occurring.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Where is search and SEO headed in the future?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s obviously difficult to predict what might be ahead with absolute certainty. But as I mentioned in the introduction, what I like about the \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/04\/27\/what-will-the-future-of-google-search-results-pages-look-like\/\">future of search<\/a>\u2019 predictions in <em>SEO: The Movie<\/em> is that they come from veterans who have been around since the early days, meaning that they know exactly where search has come from, and have a unique perspective on the overarching trends that have been present over the past two decades.<\/p>\n<p>As Rae Hoffman puts it,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIf you had asked me ten years ago, \u2018Where are we going to be in ten years?\u2019 Never would I have been able to remotely fathom the development of Twitter, or the development of Facebook, or that <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/01\/02\/quantum-supremacy-and-eight-seo-trends-2020\/\">YouTube<\/a> would become one of the largest search engines on the internet.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think it\u2019s also important to distinguish between the future of search and the future of SEO, which are two different but complimentary things. One deals with how we will go about finding information in future, and relates to phenomena like voice search, visual search, and the move to mobile. The other relates to how website owners can make sure that their content is found by <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/12\/21\/guide-google-analytics-confusing-terms\/\">users<\/a> within those environments.<\/p>\n<p>Rand Fishkin believes that the future of SEO is secure for at least a few years down the line.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cSEO has a very bright future for at least the next three or four years. I think the future after that is more uncertain, and the biggest risk that I see to this field is that search volume, and the possibility of being in front of searchers, diminishes dramatically because of smart assistants and voice search.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Brett Tabke adds:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe future of SEO, to me, is this entire holistic approach: SEO, mobile, the web, social\u2026 Every place you can put marketing is going to count. We can\u2019t just do on-the-page stuff anymore; we can\u2019t worry about links 24\/7.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As for the future of search, CEO of Ignite Visibility John Lincoln sums it up well at the very end of the movie when he links search to the general act of researching. Ultimately, people are always going to have a need to research and discover information, and this means that \u2018search\u2019 in some form will always be around.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will say the future of search is super bright,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd people are going to evolve with it.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cSearching is always going to be tied to research, and whenever anybody needs a service or a product, they\u2019re going to do research. It might be through Facebook, it might be through Twitter, it might be through <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/10\/03\/linkedin-retargeting-strategies\/\">LinkedIn<\/a>, it might be through YouTube. There\u2019s a lot of different search engines out there, and platforms, that are always expanding and contracting based off of the features that they\u2019re putting out there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCreating awesome content that\u2019s easy to find, that\u2019s technically set up correctly and that reverberates through the internet\u2026 That\u2019s the core of what search is about.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>SEO: The Movie <\/em>is definitely an enjoyable watch and at 40 minutes in length, it won\u2019t take up too much of your day. If you\u2019re someone who\u2019s been around in search since the beginning, you\u2019ll enjoy the trip down Memory Lane. If, like me, you\u2019re newer to the industry, you\u2019ll enjoy the look back at <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2017\/03\/29\/a-visual-history-of-google-serps-1996-to-2017\/\">where it came from<\/a> \u2013 and particularly the realization that there some things which haven\u2019t changed at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SEO: The Movie is a new documentary which explores the origin story of search and SEO, as told by several of its pioneers. It\u2019s a 40-minute snapshot of the search industry that is and was, with a glimpse into the future and what might become of SEO in the years to come. Here are some of the highlights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[739,788,226,342,789,790,791,227,792,793,794,795,796,212],"content_type":[27095],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-video","tag-barry-schwartz","tag-brett-tabke","tag-danny-sullivan","tag-google-algorithm-updates","tag-history-of-search","tag-jill-whalen","tag-john-lincoln","tag-matt-cutts","tag-panda","tag-penguin","tag-rae-hoffman","tag-rand-fishkin","tag-seo-the-movie","tag-transparency","content_type-news"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"Rebecca Sentance","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/SEO-the-Movie-120x90.png","category":"Industry","timeago":"9y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}