Many people are familiar with the term Bitcoin, a form of digital currency. Bitcoins are mined with the help of programs and stored in a virtual set of hard-to-crack information called a Blockchain. This enables Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to exist.
This innovation is set to shake up the market and economy as it allows individuals to make transactions without an intermediary entity, such as a credit card or a bank, making the transaction more protected and straightforward.
Several businesses that are on the front lines to be disturbed by the popularity of bitcoin are car dealerships, voting, ridesharing, real estate, sports management, and weaponry. “While the search marketing industry isn’t the first thing you think of in this case, Bitcoin can have severe implications for the industry,” says Caleb Ulku, founder of the United States’ leading SEO marketing firm, Ulku Logistics.
Caleb Ulku is a chemical engineer turned professional marketer. He started Ulku Logistics to solve a need in the local businesses of his hometown on the Mississippi Gulf Coast; these businesses were still using location-dependent, word-of-mouth marketing and failing in the limelight of businesses who were utilizing search marketing to establish a new audience.
So few of these businesses were concentrating their marketing efforts on online marketing – an essential in the modern world of business – that Caleb had to step up and help his fellow entrepreneurs thrive.
Caleb Ulku believes that cutting-edge websites build on strong principles of search engine optimization can change any entrepreneur’s business by putting them in front of their target audience at the right point in the funnel. Ulku Logistics was founded on the idea of bridging that gap.
Ulku Logistics is an online marketing agency focused on search engine optimization and paid traffic marketing, helping businesses connect with the people they want to communicate with, using the right message to earn a response.
“Nonetheless, if Bitcoin continues to be embraced by huge organizations like Amazon and Walmart, it will absolutely affect the way we make payments across search marketing industries, website owners, sponsors, eCommerce businesses – you name it,” says Ulku.
Understanding Blockchain
Don and Alex Tapscott, authors of a 2016 book called “Blockchain Revolution” offered a succinct explanation of what a blockchain is:
“The Blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions, but virtually everything of value.
In layman’s terms, it resembles a Google Doc spreadsheet that is open to the public, which shows transactions and is tamperproof.
“Many people are estimating blockchain will be as effective – or more so – than the web when it first launched in the ‘90s,” says Ulku.
The Fate of Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
In the realm of digital marketing, key platforms like Google, Facebook, and YouTube connect marketers with website owners or online business owners.
Google, for example, is a platform with a focus on programmatic promotions, where it assists site owners with running advertisements on sites through the Google Display Network. “Google is basically the broker that enables marketers and website owners to communicate with each other,” says Ulku, “Google takes a percentage for every click or impression it is able to showcase the advertiser’s information, connecting buyers and clients to businesses.”
Blockchain stands to disrupt these platforms by checking whether traffic to a site is real and what actions the clients are taking with 100% precision. At that point, the client and the marketer would not need a platform to serve as a middleman.
“Blockchain, being the impermeable record of information it is, will also help lessen online fraud. It will give customers and businesses a seamless experience of the transaction without risking their personally identifiable information,” says Ulku.
The Fate of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
As organizations begin to receive blockchain information as a part of the standard transaction process, they would need a way to incorporate it into their website. This will introduce both issues and opportunities in which SEOs should work closely with developers to ensure there are no compatibility issues with their search appearance and the content management system they choose.
“As new blockchains are created, and it is all the more broadly received, it will absolutely disturb the search marketing industry in a variety of ways. For now, however, search marketers should simply follow the blockchain’s development,” says Ulku.
