By David Hurst
The Internet. It’s a changing beast. I look back fondly on the days where META Keywords held the key to unlock search engine success. I would finish a website, tap in some keywords and submit it to HotBot, Infoseek et al, check the rankings a few minutes later, re-tweak the keywords, re-submit, and then check again. Heck, it was possible to get anything to the top of the search engines within a few hours. Things have moved on.
Progress is a good thing. Early Internet users will no doubt recall that every search engine query returned copious amounts of porn websites, no matter what keywords you entered, and whilst some might have been quite happy with this arrangment, it was abundantly obvious that the search engines needed to pick up their game somewhat. This is the principal reason behind Google’s meteoric rise. Indeed, Google claim that more than 1,000 years of programming time has been devoted to their algorithm, and development is still ongoing. In fact, they sometimes make as many as 10 changes to the algorithm each week.
Some of these changes are made to specifically counteract the actions of Search Engine Optimisation, but most are refinements that help to deliver better search results for Google users. Google’s motivation for making these continuous refinements could hardly be considered altruistic - I’m sure they are acutely aware of the fickle nature of the Internet user. In all likelihood, you are a Google user, particularly considering that (as at September 2009) more than 83% of the world’s search traffic ends up at Google’s door. But, I’m guessing that you probably don’t have any special love or affection for Google itself, you probably don’t go home and worship before an effigy of the Google logo and if another search engine came along that offered you better speed and more relevance you would have little or no hesitation in switching.
Herein lies a key concept in the world of search engine marketing: Google’s index and algorithm is what makes them the best, and they know that. It stands to reason therefore that Google would go to some lengths to protect their main asset, particularly when their revenue stream (Adwords) depends upon the popularity of the engine. If we all stopped using Google, then companies would stop spending money on pay-per-click advertising with Adwords. Given that Google makes its money from the sponsored listings on the search page and not the natural search results, which do you think they would rather see businesses using? So, any trick SEO experts can come up with to manipulate the algorithm in their favour will sooner or later be discovered and legislated against, usually with fairly drastic consequences for the rankings of the websites that are using such tricks.
So what’s left? Are we as website owners forced to become subject to the whims of a corporate giant that is beginning to look like it has aspirations for complete global domination in all areas of IT and Internet? Well, generally speaking, yes we are. Google control their index and regardless of what some SEO companies will tell you, it’s not really possible to manipulate that index and enjoy long term benefits. Every week that goes by, Google shut the doors on more and more under-handed or “black hat” SEO techniques, and woe betide any website employing them. And this may well prompt you to ask the question that I used to title this post: Is SEO dead?
No, far from it. However, as the landscape of search changes, we have to adapt and change too. Businesses that are prepared to be agile and make changes to their online offering will always fair better. The ever increasing focus on social interaction and networking means changes for us. Why? Because Google will give the people what they want - it has to - and the people want social interaction. Internet users love Facebook, Twitter and blogging. Why? Because it gives them a voice. Give customers to your e-commerce store a chance to come and review your products and guess what? They will come and review. Further, they will be creating content for you, content that Google will be interested in indexing. Yes, our whole perspective is changing.
What is SEO now? Sure, there is a need to get your code optimised, but that’s a one-off task. What can we do on an ongoing basis to increase our search engine ranking? Believe it or not the answer is simple. Content.
Write more content and you will have more content in the index and more chances that people search for you will find you. Write good quality content for your visitors and they will enjoy their visit to your website. Regularly update the content on your website and your visitors will come back regularly, and so will the Googlebot. Further, if your content is great, other websites will link to yours and that will increase your profile online and your search engine rankings.
Spread your content through all available social networks and you will massively increase the number of people looking at and linking to your content. Google is very good at identifying website that have an online “buzz” about them, and it is these sites that will enjoy the best rankings.
Speaking of rankings though, don’t fixate on your position! You will have a miserable life constantly checking search engine ranking reports and trying to explain minor shifts this way or that way in your rankings for this query or that query. No, instead focus on increasing the traffic to your website. Watch your analytics and visitor stats. Then, make the most of the visitors you are getting to the website. Surely, you would rather make more money from the visitors that you do have than less money from a greater number of visitors?
SEO is not dead, but it doesn’t really revolve around tweaking keywords and code any more. Link farms are being factored out of the algorithm on a daily basis. There are fewer and fewer quick fixes, and those that still exist or that spring up in the future will be short lived too. Really, many more things are involved with online marketing, but we’re only talking about the things we should be doing anyway. You don’t get something for nothing. Invest time and effort in your website and it will pay dividends. Leave your website to stagnate and no amount of money or time invested in SEO is going to get you a lasting top ranking in Google or any other search engine.
