By Dave Lloyd
Glengarry Glen Ross. Have you seen it? The classic “Always Be Closing” scene with Alec Baldwin never gets old. If you haven’t caught it yet, take an evening, grab some popcorn, and watch the characters—real estate salesmen—compete to sell a coveted property. Although the movie’s theme addresses the pressures associated with high-end sales, the takeaway I get after watching is that success is dependent on creating a competitive advantage.
Competing enterprises must leverage their competitive advantages to achieve global success. My focus is on developing search marketing competitive advantages for Adobe. In order to be effective, we’ve got to continually manage within an evolving landscape. Over the past 15 years, the only constant in SEO and search marketing has been change. Changes to algorithms, changes to digital channels, changes to available data sets—and these are part of the sea change as marketing has moved heavily toward a digital and data-driven focus. It’s a wonder we haven’t lost our minds trying to capitalize on the next digital advancement.
According to a Moz estimate, Google changes its algorithms 500 to 600 times each year. Since we optimize for best practices, not a particular engine, we do a quarterly exercise on our team to assess and evaluate the changes needed in our organization to stay consistent with the industry expectation. Over the past two years alone, we’ve seen Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird. (Remember the “Phantom” update earlier this year?) As a matter of fact, they just released an update, with less than favorable reviews—to put it mildly!