SEO trends can often reveal more than just popular search terms they can highlight socio-economic phenomena and underline the needs and concerns of a population. One such trend is the significant rise in search volume for SASSA grants in South Africa, a topic that has not only caught the attention of the general public but also digital marketers and mega advertisers like Google.
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) is responsible for administering social grants to improve the quality of life for the most vulnerable citizens in South Africa. These grants include pensions for the elderly, disability grants, and child support grants, among others. Given the economic challenges faced by many South Africans, these grants are a crucial lifeline for many people in South Africa.
On platforms like Fiverr, content creators and digital marketers converge to offer their services, there has been a notable spike in demand for SASSA-related content from South African services like that of the Rabbits. This surge in interest stems from the high monthly search volumes for SASSA-related terms. People from the most destitute parts of South Africa are turning to search engines in large numbers, looking for information on how to access these social services and payments.
Financial Services Advertising Conundrum
Despite the target audience for SASSA-related searches being economically disadvantaged, many fintech advertisers with substantial budgets are paying a premium for ads on financial services-related websites, very often so unwittingly.
This happens largely because SASSA-related searches fall under the broader category of financial services, leading their to ads being served on SASSA check sites and similar platforms by Googles ad-serving algorithms.
Paradoxically while the audience searching for SASSA grants is not a lucrative target for high-end financial products, the high search volumes still attract significant ad spend largely because their campaign managers are not astutely looking after their campaign deliverables.
But the rabbithole is deep here.
Advertisers aiming to reach affluent customers with financial services in South Africa inadvertently pay a high premiums for clicks by social grant seekers. Bear in mind, premium traffic in South Africa is ridiculously few and far between when you step outside of Naspers monopoly of online media portals.
Thus any advertiser on Google looking to advertise a global product and get in-front of a “South African” target audience is going to be paying top Dollar for the privilage of Social Security Agency audience advert displays – sorry Temu.
Ethics and Advertising Was Never A Thing
The SEO and Google Ads landscapes have faced similar issues in other industries, resulting in a fallout of actions both online and offline. Ethics are hardly a new topic of discussion. Rehab, cryptocurrency, mesothelioma lawyers, and the payday loan industry have all encountered their fair share of challenges, specifically because they targeted audiences with questionable ethics until it makes headlines and they are forced to stop and re-evaluate.
The high demand and significant ad spend in these sectors attract advertisers looking to capitalize, with Google acting as a complicit conduit. This has led to scrutiny, regulatory crackdowns, and a push for more ethical advertising in other industries. However, micro-niche scenarios like SASSA will probably continue to drive millions of rand/dollar transactions and fly under the radar as long as a blind eye is turned.
The Role of Local Links in SEO
Getting mentions/links/stories from local, authoritative websites is a very important factor, not just in South Africa but wherever you want to rank a site in global Google results. Local South African links significantly influence search engine perceptions of a site’s relevance and authority within the geographic region.
Boosting visibility and ranking, information about social grants from alternative sources than the official government websites may not be entirely a bad thing. South African government websites are notoriously poorly optimized and bureaucratic, making it nearly impossible for layman users to understand the next steps required to complete important government processes.
There is a strong motivation from the SEO industry that content on their SASSA sites is a better explanation or representation than what the South African government sites can provide. (Just never mind Google’s Ads). It’s a stretch of the imagination, but fair enough—moving on swiftly.
Despite the importance of local links, there is a distinct lack of South African-focused high-value content creation and distribution services is a problem, it creates yet another pool of sharks and fish.
The aforementioned Naspers and a handful of “South African” blogs and news portals which monopolize local South African web traffic outside of the niches. Very often, these portals are owned and operated by offshore entities that leverage every possible algorithm, making it difficult for “mom and pop” businesses to have a toe in the traffic game.
The cost of engaging with these mega portals as an average “mom and pop” business in South Africa comes down to handing over large sums of money that produce largely ineffective and unsustainable strategies and results. As a source of traffic, these sites are frequently not commercially viable options. In most cases, you are looking at between $250 (R4500) and $3000+ (R55k) for a post on a major South African portal with zero guarantees of a return.
Many available South African “SEO link services” can be found on Fiverr and usually stem sellors based in India/Pakistan. These services target South Africa to leverage cost differences between advertising on monopoly sites and what the average “mom and pop” business can afford to pay. They also leverage the fact that very few South African “mom and pop” businesses simply don’t understand what they are buying or the mechanics that drive rankings.
As with most (not all) link sellers, offerings come from low-quality websites staged in blog networks that have boosted DA (Domain Authority) and PA (Page Authority) metrics in tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs. (That’s if you are lucky) Aside from the obvious penalty risk, these sites have little bearing on gaining ranking on search engines in South Africa. One of the many hallmark indicators of “Fake Domain Authority” are sites with backlinks from Google itself. For example, https://www.google.co.za/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpullingrabbits.co.za%2F from an SEO tools/link broker perspective is a perfectly aligned backlink worth big $$$. A high authority domain like Google.co.za linking to a website about pullingrabbits.co.za surely must mean magic……. But let’s be honest for a second: Google is not going to touch that link or even factor it into link juice considerations, no matter what the SEO tools pr link brokers say. That is just not Domain Authority fella, and it’s certainly not going to help a ranking.
We have written about DA boosting before, but the “industry” of backlinks is such that you can buy links on websites that are off the charts in terms of their “authority” according to SEO tools. In actuality, they are de-indexed or entirely ignored by Google as any source of “authority.” If Googlebot does index them, it does so reluctantly and by merit of other factors probably inherited with the dropped domain they picked up. “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” and on the same note, if you buy a link on a broker’s website and Google decides not to index the article, it does not take genius to work out that it’s adding no value.
So If Boosted DA Links Don’t Work What Does?
Ethical link-building practices, such as linking to reputable and relevant sites, can/will and do enhance a site’s trust and authority in Google’s ranking ecosystem. It’s a well known phenomenon that has spawned the link brokering industry and been exploited since the dawn of commercial SEO. Let’s cut back to the SASSA SEO fraternity. Most SEO people worth their salt know all the above and thus seek out links between the lines.
Actual high authority websites in South Africa being the holy grail to South African rankings.
We took a look at https://sassasrdgrant.co.za (Yet Another SASSA Site helping the South African social services do their job apparently). They have a lot of anchor text for “sassa status check” which is the action that people are performing when checking their payment status.
Google themselves have a term “Your Money or Your Life” pages (YMYL) basically are pages that, Google percieves that could hurt the “future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users” in most cases “users” at Google is a term used interchangeably with “shareholders” because thier future “happiness” is assured by their “financial stability” above all.
In this case a YMYL value descision is being made about that sassasrdgrant.co.za page.
Who’s it hurting?
Truth is nobody, users on the site can still lookup their social grant status; (albeit not the official search) but it’s not like SASSA cares; and if users don’t lose money or care how they get their status then who’s being harmed?
Advertisers on Google might get upset about the value of the traffic, but again that’s entirely on them to use Google’s tools to limit their budget’s on places that work for them and the fact that they missed the ball by paying for ads to SASSA seekers, is their own goal, the tools exist on all of Google’s platforms to stop the display.
Back to the SEO
These sites that rank in this result are not driven by expensive links from monopoly sites, but actual local South African authority sites like the ANC Youth League, The National Community Radion Forum, Western Cape Anti Eviction, various assortments of dropped projects by major banks in South Africa (alongside a host of the usual “boosting ” bookmarking type websites and comment links).
The tactic is interesting in so far as discovering these small pockets of high authority sites in South Africa (somthing that the Rabbits are pretty good at – shameless self promotion indeed). These are sites we had no idea even existed for the purpouses they are being used and are very exciting discoveries to us. Kudos.
We took a bit of an undue snipe at Indian and Pakistani and Fiverr link brokers earlier largely to illustrate a point about South African businesses being extorted with high DA pitches and in the majority of cases India and Pakistan enter the firing line because thse countries lead the coalface of the link brokering worldwide. Not to say that some of he biggest local news / traffic hoarding sites are actually UK based operations with their own impune extorions ramping up the price of “local links”.
This is not however to say they universally promote bad tactics, we have worked with SEO folks in those countries operate on the next level of the next level and command and uncanny understanding where and how to push the envelope for getting solid commercial rankings in the most demanding niches. Unfortunately for many South African businesses it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to working with link and content brokers in general.
Respect to the Nichefinders