(Reuters) – Ron Springer is overhauling his company’s website and is spending a big chunk of his marketing budget to help boost its search engine ranking. He had no idea he might be throwing his money away on an outdated strategy.
“If search engine isn’t what gets you up to the top of the list, what is?” said Springer, who runs boutique event planning firm Esprit Productions in Libertyville, Illinois. “We designed it with search engine totally in mind.”
Entrepreneurs like Springer may want to reconsider pouring money into search engine optimization (SEO) as their primary marketing strategy, according to Chris Dixon, who recently penned a controversial blog, titled: “SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups”.
“I talk to a lot of startups and almost none that I know of post-2008 have gained significant traction through SEO,” wrote Dixon, the co-founder of online startup Hunch, who has invested in numerous startups, including Skype and Foursquare.
Dixon was immediately taken to task by defenders of SEO, the popular means of boosting an organization’s presence in Internet searches with keywords and relevant Web links.
Among them was Dave McClure, a prominent angel investor and founding partner of the Silicon Valley tech incubator 500 Startups. “I’m contrarian because SEO works. SEO obviously matters,” said McClure, adding it generates “huge amounts of monetization on the Web, huge amounts of traffic – organically and paid.”