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I know of some local SEO firms here on Long Island who are still doing things the old way - stuffing keywords into title tags, padding pages with extraneous content, creating pages for no reason other than to target a keyword, etc. I even worked for a few firms who were doing this. Frustrating to say the least.
Still, I think a point that is often missed in arguments like yours is that the importance of understanding what makes a site SEO-friendly is not going anywhere. I come across websites every day that should, by the nature of how long the domain has been active/trusted, the number of inbound links they have and the relevant content they publish, be ranked very well in search engines, but because they were built with outdated methods that render much of their relevant content invisible to Googlebot and other crawlers they are nowhere to be found. In that respect, understanding search engines and how to build an SEO-friendly website is not going anywhere - it is, and will remain, an importance part of web development and Internet Marketing as a whole.
But I would agree for the most part that businesses are better off focusing on building their brand and being remarkable than tweaking Meta tags or stuffing keywords. Those tactics, indeed, are dead, and building remarkable content or a website that is usable will undoubtedly bring a better return for the business.
In short, I'd say that if you define "SEO" as the old tactics of stuffing keywords into title tags, content, etc, it is indeed dead or dying. Most businesses, especially those with brand new sites, are going to have to really be remarkable to make it to the top for competitive keywords - and it will take a lot more than stuffing keywords and getting some inbound directory links.
You will also need to incorporate a universal search optimization plan going forward. Gone are the days of just text links that we click on. There will be more to it than that. Shoe has the right idea that traditional SEO is dying, but SEO itself is simply evolving. Could his post just be another long line of crappy link bait by people in our niche?
Jaan Kanellis's last blog post..SEO Analogies Help Us Understand
SEOs will still be here 10 years from now. What they are doing will change yet again (i.e. we do a lot more community building than we used to do).
Maybe, just maybe, we will have finally brushed off the 'snake oil' reputation that continues to haunt us from such a small percentage of the industry.
Brent D. Payne
25% of search queries every day are brand new, how do they know who should be ranking above who. The basics might not have as much of an effect in the future, but they will still matter to some degree for a while yet.
Glen Allsopp's last blog post..Social Media Presence of the Technorati Top 20
SEO won't die and you know that, just another link bait...
Web Browser's last blog post..Opera Dragonfly Hits the Streets
Interesting to consider how this would benefit the SEs - if the "middle class" websites are no longer able to rank on page 1 organically, they'll have to rely soley on paid search. But would the "rich" websites eliminate their paid search campaigns because they're always high in the organic results? I doubt it. So those lowly "middle class" sites would have to pay the piper an ever increasing price to be listed in the paid results. Even from Pittsburgh I can hear the cash registers in Mountain View chinging away.
Enough rambling... just my random thinking-out-loud for the day!
I think there (as you must) that there are way too many factors in getting a website ranked well.
I agree that building a brand is very important online but there's far more to getting good rankings than that. There's too many websites who despite building well-respected brands just don't understand SEO and aren't targeting the relevant keywords to suit their business. As Glen pointed out there's the long tail of search which needs to be optimised for, some websites may even have a good selection of high traffic, relevant keywords to target but perhaps these are unrealistic so rankings will be low and search traffic minimal.
If there's no thought involved in the websites structure from an SEO perspective it's unlikely to maximise it's potential in the search engines.
Kevin Gibbons's last blog post..I’m not a conspiracy theorist but…
I believe the most successful search marketers, will be those that adopt and practice a holistic approach to helping companies build their business. This means a combination of strong content building (ie. copywriting), effective PR, PPC, etc.
I do agree that the hollow manipulation path to SERP success, (i.e. links with little to no company substance on arrival to page), will go the way of the dinosaur over the coming years. But then - we all knew it was about content anyway. If you're strictly a "link-builder" with no regard for content - I think in two years - you're in trouble.
It's the internet marketing continuum - Content builds brand, brand builds traffic, traffic builds sales.
I saw Shoemoney's post yesterday and here's the comment I added to my Google Reader link:
“I have to agree that there's no future in "current SEO." The smart marketers are including social media, usability, viral, and much more. I know I am. :-)”
It's all about semantics. Current SEO practices will die out. Then again, the same can be said of the SEO practices we used in 1999.
Web Browser's last blog post..Firefox Security? Here We Go Again
As for this post - When someone calls a spade a spade, what can you say. Didn't really enjoy Shoe's post - but this one is quite insightful. All SEO's should take note and embrace the challenge of improving / diversifying their business models.
@Jaan agree with you, Shoe is right on traditional SEO.
SEO the way some companies doing it right now is dying soon IMO, ie. linkbuilding, bad website, no content, to much ppc, etc..
On the other hand, SEO is more going toward Information Architect, UX, copywriting skills, front end web development... all that through better internet strategist.
Samuel Lavoie's last blog post..Intracom 08, April 29th in Quebec City
SEO has always been about putting yourself in front of the right people at the right time. This cannot be accomplished by merely using traditional 'building your brand' techniques. It takes a seasoned search engine professional to formulate a custom strategy that will ONLY work for a specific line of business.
So is SEO dying? No. Is it growing up? Absolutely. It's just getting more nuanced and complicated, as life generally does when you grow up.
CT Moore's last blog post..SEO Needs to Grow Up Along with Google and the Web
Our Monmouth's last blog post..10 Endangered NJ Historic Sites
Due to the incredible volue of information on the net the use of search engines will never disappear. They are hear to stay and so is SEO.
wii guy's last blog post..See how fast you can type
Spammy crap never works long term. It never has, it never will. Google doesn't want spam sites on the front page for any search!
If you want to win at SEO, Greg has the right idea: You must be the best result for the search query. I repeat, you will never fool google for long.
Where I disagree is that google will discriminate against highly relevant smaller sites. The biggest site isn't always the most relevant, and most the time...it's not!
If you want a wide selection of G. Loomis Fishing Rods, you should go to the G. Loomis Superstore - http://www.gloomis.us, not Cabelas. Niche stores are still alive and well on the Internet, and being focused is still the best way to beat the big boys online.
My 2.5 Cents (adjusted for stagflation),
Vi Wickam
Zello Partners
http://www.zello.us
Online Marketing for Real Business
In addition, let's say that this is true... how easy is it going to be to game that? Shouldn't take long for a few companies to spring up that hire people to visit sites, visit multiple pages and leave a browser open. Maybe the exact opposite - talk about negative SEO.
You better become a top 10 branded site???? Okay here's the deal with that, I know about the top 10 branded sites in several industries and I go to their website directly... I don't use a search engine to find them and I never will. I use a search engine to find out about stuff that I don't know. Makes sense right? SE's would do themselves harm if they returned the top 10 sites that everyone knew about with each search query..Should I just jump to page 2 and 3? I think it was your article the other day stating that sites are enjoying high conversion rates because people know about them and that many of those conversions are from direct traffic.
Here's the deal with your definition of SEO. You've seemed to have mistakenly lumped SEO in with spam - I'd think anyone that says they are an SEO knows that link building (on the surface) and keyword stuffing etc. is out and has been for a long time. There's much more to SEO than you seem to realize. Thanks for chiming in Andy with some newer techniques as it appears that Greg is aimlessly wondering around in the late 90s.
I got an idea! Let's spend all of our time branding as opposed to giving users something to be impressed with...yeah that'll work well with the Googlers new "stats based algo".... Should I spend a million dollars on a 3 month TV campaign just to increase site traffic and neglect to build more than a home page? Maybe I should spend millions on branding and then create a website with information that's next to impossible to find, access and understand.
Greg, if your assumption is correct, the Googler will destroy the "information highway" and create an information wall. I bet a lot of search engines hope Google would be so careless...talk about an easy way to lose market share. JMO
I am accused of defining SEO too narrowly. Actually, I see SEO very broadly--really a holistic kind of thing.
However, my impression of the SEO industry is that they are the ones still stuck in the past. When they call me, their strategies always show their ignorance. They are still hung up on things like link trading and adding content (like a few articles are really going to make a difference).
For an ecommerce site in a competitive niche, throwing up a few articles and trying to get a few inbound links is a futile strategy. Adding so-called long-tail keywords is close to worthless too.
Taking these kind of approaches work about as well as trying to increase conversion rates by adding a privacy page. Yes, you should do them, but don't expect dramatic results.
My philosophy is if you are doing thing right as a business, SEO is a natural result. On the other hand, the SEO crowd largely believes that if you do SEO, you can get a lot of free traffic. They were right in the past but wrong today.
Now here is the thing. I have never worked with a SEO that really understood what I am talking about. Yes, they give the idea some lip service and parrot what they read on blogs, but they really do not understand the relationship between running a business and SEO.
I do think some good SEOs are out there, and if I were going to hire one, I would look for one that was a great business person.
SEO can cheat the findability for a while, but not over a long time span.
Traffic in B2B is not leads.
We have traffic thanks to content, now we need conversion.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detai...
Still the question is:
Google makes money on Adsense/Adwords.
So how does this fit together with being found on the Internet? Does Google take into account the money spend on their advertising systems or not?
I get at least 60% of my traffic from long tail keywords - not too mention that long tail keywords often provide better, more qualified leads.
We helped a small, successful business and business woman have the best quarter ever through a 300% increase in organic traffic. Doesn't mean anything though, right? She should have spent 100 times as much on branding only to find that consumers now search for information using search engines and guess what? She's not there.
I'll tell you right now that a good business man doesn't think that focusing on branding alone is a good strategy. Don't you think that top placement in Google helps with credibility and branding? Don't you think that a user friendly website and earning great links from authority sites helps with branding?
Throw something out that 99% of the businesses out there can afford... I doubt Nike and Walmart are subscribers.
Maybe you're forgetting that SEO is a part of a "holistic" branding strategy and that, for small businesses, branding on its own is futile or at least out of the question.
John Hunter's last blog post..China Outsourcing Manufacturing to USA
If your an SEO and have not realized you need to grasp ahold of the changes ahead, then you might take a deeper look outside the conundrum so many get sucked into.
To sum it up, I don't think that the seo industry is dying, I believe that almost like every other industry "professionals" need to constantly keep pace with the trends and in our business the search engine algorithims are what sets ours. So as you mentioned above the search engine's are getting more advanced and are able to detect what belongs and what does not, we will of course will adjust our methods for staying in the game and if that means going from link building to jumping through hula hoops to rank #1 then that's what you do. I believe the search engines will always have a paper trial on the reasons why sites are ranked the way they are which can be mimicked or out done.
What is it with the kool-aid those cats are drinking?
On the contrary our firm has more leads flowing steadily by the hour as a result of "the marketing revolution / exodus" both enterprise and small business alike are taking from traditional marketing and exorbitant advertising rates.
Cost per sale is the new language, SEO is evolving, but not dying for sure.
Jeffrey Smith's last blog post..Building Link Popularity for Your Website One Link At a Time!
Ankit's last blog post..Yellow Warning Message from Google
While I agree that it's getting more difficult, it really depends on the marketing objectives, e.g. optimizing a local company for country search.
Take my case for example - I have virtually no chance of getting top rankings for "SEO" on google.com, yet I'm ranked in the top 5 out of 315 million results on google.com.sg.
Since I'm targeting the Singapore market, it's exactly what I want because Google redirects Singapore users to google.com.sg by default.
Larry Lim's last blog post..Are Freelancers 2nd Class?
For sure, lot of old SEO tricks are dead, some can still work to promote a page on a specific keyword for a short period of time (e.g. SEO contests) but will get the whole site penalized on the long term.
So forget about tricks and start thinking about marketing strategy, in which understanding how search engines work and evolve is still an important piece of the global picture.
Loki's last blog post..Le PageRank
The chant stopped as the kids suddenly turned within and asked themselves a question that had probably never occurred to them.
Brian Donohue's last blog post..Guns, God, and GTA IV
I think anyone can appreciate the value of branding. But let’s get real here. You are putting the cart before the horse. All the branding in the world will do you no good without great exposure. Most of us will agree that there is no better exposure in the world than the 1st page or a relevant search. So before we declare SEO dead, let’s take a good look at just how well they work. The internet search is not so incredibly popular by accident.
Brian Donohue's last blog post..7 Heaven
Establish your web site objectives, take a look at your META's to make sure they are done right as well as check existing search engine ranking, web site traffic, results, and determine where the gaps might be.
Study your competitors and determine what they are doing right and where you can improve your efforts.
Examine your web site’s content for quantity and quality – whether it is relevant and appropriately keyword-dense for your search engine ranking goals.
Ensure that each page of your web site is optimized at the structural and code levels.
Maintain consistent branding and usability throughout your web site – although it’s now optimized for search engine “robots”, everything still has to look right for the rest of us!
Well written content is the key. You must have rich content that is relevent to your product and your keywords, discription and title must also be relevent.
Doorway pages, domain cloaking, keyword stuffing, link farms or other gimmicks to make your site seem to be more than it is will get your site blacklisted by the engines.
This is just a little touch on SEO as there is even more involved however I do not have time to talk about it right now.
If you would like help with SEO come and visit us at our website.
SEO is not even close to dead. I have tried sites without it and with it and sites without it had barley any traffic. Sites I did SEO to had hundreds and thousands more targeted traffic.
Thanks for reading and have a great day.
kyle
Nate Desmond's last blog post..Give Your Business a Great Name!
I have to think that you must just say whatever pops into your head in order to have something to say, stop being a talking head.
Google and other engines alike are investing(will be investing)in technology that will soon be able to crawl and index complex scripts for information such as Javascript and Flash.
Like others have said the pinnings of SEO will change whereby SEO's will need to focus on wider communities, information architecture and usability.
It wont be so much about on page factors anymore but more about content and user experience. How useful is the information on your site and how user friendly your site is. These factors will decide/continue to decide who gets the link from other webmasters and more importantly so linking will still have a weighting.
How else can an engine decide how important a brand/website is other than finding a means of checking references towards it.
If its not links it will indeed be something contextual or referential which helps engines gauge relevancy.
The whole point of search is that it is supposed to give un-baised search results when it comes to organic listings. So why would Google and other engines go out of their way to promote a large brand purely because hey have a prominent brand? This is a poor user experience by any means and users will soon find alternative methods to find information once they catch on.
Going even further if SEO's are not optimizing for SE's they will be optimizing the next type of web search facility, platforms are constantly evolving.
SEO dead? do some homework.
People are already aware of paid search and how manipulated they are...if organic results become like this people will soon abandon them.
D
As one who is not fond of SEO per say I would have to agree with nay sayers. As long as there are websites, search engines and the desirte to rank high on the search results,I hate to say it but SEO's will exits. The reason is there will always be those who want to take a pill to remedy anything. In other words, take the easy way out. However, SEO as known today or practiced today will die or will evolve as have other industries before it.
Jim's last blog post..SEO Made Easy!
As long as Google doesn't start to serve all the trillions of search request manually, people will be tweaking rankings. An algorithm is still an algorithm.
I recommend you to stop believing all the Google propaganda and just have a look at the SERPs and why sites rank or not. I took Google nearly 10 years to only get rid of the worst forms of spam.
Btw, Googles business model is not to run a search engine - it is about selling ads.
In my industry, real estate sites that provide inventory and meaningful content will be the ones that survive.
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