SEO losing ground?

[kickstart2]

Research has shown that SEO strategies are becoming increasingly ineffective. This is due to the flawed objective of SEO methods. Metaphorically speaking, someone teaching SEO methods is like a teacher providing answers and biased guides to students before an exam.

What happens is, as the exam papers are changed regularly, and new formats replace the old one, the guides provided by the teacher gets obsolete ever so frequently. And when that happens, the teacher has to provide new answers and guides to make sure the students are up to the task.

What’s wrong with that?

Well, the ‘exams’ you’re sitting for is not the usual stagnant ones. As Yahoo! And Google enhance their search engine algorithms constantly, the answers and guides given by your teachers are becoming, essentially, useless.

And there is a limit to how far you teacher can keep up with the exams.

Therefore, I, agree propose a new method of building traffic. So simple, but oh so effective! All you have to do is, build up high-quality content related to your business.

Metaphorically speaking, by building high-quality content, you don’t even need a teacher! All you have to do is make sure you get the concept right, and the marks will come through automatically! It doesn’t matter how many times the exam papers are changed, 2 X 2 will always be 4.

This is because the spiders employed by Yahoo!, Google and so on are being optimized constantly to think like humans. In the past years they could be fooled easily by shady websites who put on a show, but lack in real content. But now, they are ranking pages based on human reaction!

For example, your website would be more favorable in the eyes of a spider if surfers stay longer in your website than a rival’s (common sense). Also, they would monitor the surfer’s actions in your website.

“Is he going through the other pages of the website?� and so on.

No SEO strategy can combat these modern spiders. That’s why, instead of trying to stay ahead of the spiders, form a partnership with them! Make them genuinely LIKE your website!

All in all, if you want to sustain your online business, you better make sure that you build terrific content. After all, you have nothing to lose but everything to gain from changing your perception of achieving a high ranking in the search engines.

That said, SEO still plays a major part in staying ahead of today’s search engine’s algorithms. You still do need to do the basic search engine optimization methods, like adding keywords, submitting your pages to the search engines. However, do keep in mind on what’s REALLY important.

__________________________________________________ _______________

Daniel Chua.
Owner of http://www.internetmarketingleader.com
Do you have what it takes?

[MagicYoyo]

Originally Posted by kickstart2

No SEO strategy can combat these modern spiders. [...]
All in all, if you want to sustain your online business, you better make sure that you build terrific content.

Building content is already part of SEO's strategy, dont you think ?

[petertdavis]

Yes, SEO has officially jumped the shark. It's time to move onto the next gig.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by petertdavis

Yes, SEO has officially jumped the shark. It's time to move onto the next gig.

Love it.

[ddd3king]

Content is only small part of this SEO rocket science. I am newbie to this, but as far I know there are lot more things than content. If you do not take other offsite measures you will never show up not only on the first page, not even on the 99999999999 pages, you know it ?

[kickstart2]

Building content is already part of SEO's strategy, dont you think ?

Well, it all depends on what you perceive as content. What SEO users of the past used to do is load their pages with the same keywords all over again, like 'shellfish' but ignoring the importance of building great content.

For example, Mr A.'s website goes like this.

Buy Shellfish Fresh From The Sea!

I love shellfish. Do you love shellfish? I do love shellfish so much. I've been a fan of shellfish my whole life, oh those lovely grey things.

Shellfish are really pretty, you know?

__________________________________________________ _______________

Chances are, this site would be appalling to any decent surfer on the net, but drop-dead gorgeous to the spiders of the yesteryears (due to the high keyword content).

That said, this sad SEO gimmick doesn't work anymore, because spiders are becoming increasingly accurate in analyzing the attractiveness of a site based on a normal human.

How do you counter that? By building great content. Contrary to those who disapprove of content-heavey sites, content WILL come good in the coming years.

My question is, will you stay and be the best, or be stuck in the 80's like the rest?

<Sig goes in signature file>

[JoJo]

er, there are alot of 'optimisers' out there still stuck in the past and using pretty spammy techniques it that's what you mean......

but well done, basic seo is surely a must

[WagerX]

KickStart,
I agree with 99% of what your saying.. BUT.. I think that there's always going to be some blackhat SEO's who will ALWAYS beat the system. It's a little disheartenning to see it I know, but you can't deny it. It's just human nature. But I think that the long term stability prospects are better if the site is based in superior content. I agree 100%...

Cheers!

[irka]

Originally Posted by MagicYoyo

Building content is already part of SEO's strategy, dont you think ?

It is!
The thing that a search engine optimizer will always work hard on are: building links, looking for potential keywords, sharp the content of his website!

I think we will do that for a long time till there is something else :p

[kickstart2]

True... I do see your point. BUT, the point I'm trying to bring across is.. There's no use tweaking your website every week or so to try and beat the algorithms. It's... futile..

Sooner or later the spiders are going to get smarter.. no, WAY smarter than they are now. When that happens, the current SEO methods will ultimately.. perish.

Of course, new SEO methods will always come by, and that's what you have to look out for, and I put my wager on building high-quality content and keeping your visitors happy!

The thing that a search engine optimizer will always work hard on are: building links, looking for potential keywords, sharp the content of his website!

I do acknowledge the importance of the basic SEO methods (in the last part of my report). However, I'm emphasising on the importance of not getting carried away by trying to beat the search engines. There should always be a unified balance for everything.

That said, forgive me if my report was not as crystal-clear as I would have liked.

P.S. Here is the URL of the few SEO products which I know will always be an integral part of ranking your pages highly.

http://www.internetmarketingleader.com/seo.html

[MrMean]

Search Engines are always going to prefer certain styles. Unless they are able to read and understand sentences (in affect become human). Therefore SEO will always exist. As it becomes more difficult to get a decent ranking, it will become more specialist and probably more demanded.

[Ashvin]

I totally agree with you Kickstart. Tweaking a website for the search engines is dead futile. Good content is the call of the future!

[Ashvin]

Originally Posted by MrMean

Therefore SEO will always exist. As it becomes more difficult to get a decent ranking, it will become more specialist and probably more demanded.

I don't think Kickstart ever mentioned seo is dead.

But in any case, seo will surely HAVE TO live long because it is part of the "netpreneurial knowhow"...It's part of the job.

But to come back to my main train of thought, having good content on a site is in itself a very strong seo factor because this is what the search engines are looking for in a site. Of course, the other offsite factors like link popularity will perhaps lose some ground, and not be exactly how they are and affect the search engines the way they currently do, but they will always play an important role for the serps in my opinion.

[kickstart2]

I'm glad to see the replies are all very well-written. Thanks guys!

Obviously there are varying views on the subject, but overall, it's quite clear that everyone agrees that in the case of good content over SEO strategies, content wins hands down!

Not only for the sake of winning a spider's heart, but in general, winning your visitor's heart!

Keep the posts rolling!

[sem4u]

Submit to search engine? There is no need!

Content? Well yes you need to have good content, but what about links?

[kickstart2]

Links do add weight to a SE's assessment of a page, but in comparison to other SEO methods (at the moment, at least), links are not as important as people perceive it.

This is because if links were to play a major part in ranking a page, the internet would have been redundant for aspiring online businessmen, due to the crazy amount of links towards the top 10 pages of every field there is!

So, instead of seeing just one Nike website if you searched for sportswear, you would be seeing around 20 Nike web pages taking over from pole position till easily the 20th spot.

Needless to say, 90% of Nike's competitors would die out in a month or two.

In a nutshell, links do add credibility to one's website, but if you are planning on climbing the ladder with just links, you would be doing a disservice to yourself.

P.S. Check out these SEO tools that actually DO work!

<SPAM removed>

[poster]

Originally Posted by kickstart2

Links do add weight to a SE's assessment of a page, but in comparison to other SEO methods (at the moment, at least), links are not as important as people perceive it.

I would disagree about the links. For better or for worse it's one of the top parameters if not the top one in SEO.

Search for "miserable failure" on Google. The first thing that comes up is the bio of Bush on whitehouse.gov. There is not a single phrase "miserable failure" in the content of the website; however, there are hundreds of links that contain the text "miserable failure" and link to that page. I think that demonstrates how important links are, and they can be even more important than content.

Hypothetically, you don't need to do any SEO for a site to rank well for a particular keyword. As long as other sites link to that site with the targeted keyword, the site will show up at the top of the search results.

[digiweb]

This is a good post for pointing out that SEO is a game of musical chairs for some people who don't want to leave.

Still I have to disagree about a couple of things.

First, SEO still takes an education, because educated writers create great content.

Second, Google doesn't have to implement everything in the Information retrieval based on historical data patent , but you gotta figure they like these ideas a lot to patent them.

Here's a list of what they said they like (The Google Patent: Information retrieval based on historical data. March 31, 2005, or, Ethical SEO Expanded) - the link also talks about what they don't like, and what they outright ban.

Google rewards (or reserves the right to reward):
updated content (with the monkey wrench thrown in that sometimes older documents are better), especially for FAQs

• new unique content
• content that Google has successfully matched to other users' search terms
• anchor text (the text the reader sees in a link)
• links from "independent peers"
• a high and probable rate of back link growth
• updated outbound link anchor tag text
• an accelerating rate of document changes
• time-based relevancy (search for "world series champion" in 2005 yields different results than searching for "world series champion" in 2006)
• an accelerating rate of incoming links
• the trustworthiness of the site hosting the inbound link; trust is given to known entities (the government, Yahoo) and authoritative sites (outlined in yet another patent)
• an accelerating rate of document traffic
• entering a time period (e.g., "summer" or "weekends") when the document has proved more popular
• documents containing advertisements to trusted sites (e.g., Amazon)
• documents containing advertisements that receive high click-throughs
• documents with high stickiness
• documents hosted on domains registered for ten years rather than 1
• documents hosted on name servers that post quality DNS whois info
• documents hosted on name servers that host a variety of domains
• documents hosted on established name servers
• documents that slowly rise in quality ranking scores
• documents with accelerating bookmarking activity
• documents with accelerating cookie activity
• documents with accelerating cache activity
• varying anchor text in inbound links
• inbound links from high scoring sites

Google Patent: an accelerating rate of document changes

Google Patent Implications: updated outbound link anchor tag text

Google Patent implications: High and probable rate of back link growth

Google Patent implications: Links from Independent Peers

Google Patent implications: Updated Content and Anchor Text

I just discovered that my blog is linking to a site for one of my old companies -- my own blog is SEO-decaying.

[netwhip]

Excellent post Caroline,

Great resources!!!

If you play by the rules set forth on the playing field you will not receive any penalty flags and not have to move back 5 yards when you receive one.

When playing a game, if you play to win, you follow the rules and the sheer law of averages will put you ahead in the game.

Try to beat the rules or cheat and the sheer law of averages will place you behind the one playing to win.

The search engines are always bettering their algorithms to force SEO in the direction of their rules just like a referee on the playing field.

Sure you will be able to sneak some things past them but in the end the one who plays by the rules will win...

It's a law of nature as sure as gravity.


.

[Ashvin]

Good post Caroline but really, i would have dropped my mouse long ago if i believed everything google said.

Not that i'm saying i'm a black hat, i'm pure seo whitish, but it's just that the patents you've quoted is just like the thousands of other patents posted by thousands of other companies. It's a legal obligation. Do they really reflect reality?