The future of SEO

[tricknick]

With the increasing impetus and volume of web publishers building more and more websites, constantly adding to the existing tens of millions of web pages available online today, the search engines are beggining to place more importance on the value of the links that each website contains, both inwards and outwards.

Where once a top ten listing was more achievable and certainly accountable for the majority of traffic, it has been recently been reported that as much as half of a typical sites' traffic is sourced from external complimentary web sites sites that add value to the browser's experience.

This means that if trends continue, search engines will utlimately have to dramatically reform the way they "think". This also means that publishers will have to dramatically alter the way they increase traffic & popularity.

Does this spell an end to traditional SEO for higher page rankings and better search result visability?

 

[directmarketingadvice]

the search engines are beggining to place more importance on the value of the links that each website contains, both inwards and outwards.

If that were true, then it mean that actual content of the site would become a relatively less significant piece of the google (etc.) algo(s).

Is this really happening?

Steve

 

[multilingual]

SEO is just about thinking about sites from a visitors perspective.

Search engines will only survive if they give people the results they seek.

Content will become more important in the future, not less, as the SEs get more sophisticated. I can't see it going any other way.

People will enjoy your site and people will link to your site if the content is interesting and informative.

I don't see how this changes anything.

JB

 

[sandpetra]

"Where once a top ten listing was more achievable"

It's always been difficult to get to top ten when you're not sure what your doing, and it's no more difficult now to achieve top ten for those who know how it can be done, which is not rocket science (oh no! Not that old chestnut!).

There is certainly more competition now, but the seo who stops at nothing (but stays white) to achieve top ten ranking will get there eventually (the google everflux almost ensures that the long term top ten enjoy their chance at the top at some point). We achieved some nice seo results last night.

Content is King and Links are queen, as I saw stated somewhere before (and repeated ad nauseum).

I don't see this changing in the near future.

The exciting big "change" that is happening is in two fronts, for me.

• Global communication is getting easier and easier through social networking sites with much bigger future benefits for your search engine visibility if you successfully market within the social sites (like StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg).

• Local search is improving all the time in the search engines, meaning local businesses now have a chance to top the results in their neighbourhood (rather than some big search engine optimiser in America when you're based in the UK). Sometimes that's all a business needs to survive.

PS - A social networking site like delicious, for those in the dark, is simply a collection of online bookmarks, making it easier for you to remember useful sites you've visited - the search engines love these sites and a lot of people use them. If you write a good article, 100 people could bookmark your site. That's 100 links pointing to your site next time Google, Yahoo and MSN recalculate the SERPS (search engine results pages). - I take it everyone knows the value of quality links to your site?

 

[Aspect Investments]

Congrats Shaun on your search results. I can see you have put a lot of work in.

 

[sandpetra]

Cheers. As you well know a lot of obsessing goes into this stuff - it's the only way you get better at it.

For any budding seo out there all they need to ask themselves is "can I sit in front of a computer for 14 hours" - and not miss a beat.

I think you've really got to obsess in this game to get a march on the competition - some of whom's been around for 10 years.

It can be a lot of it's guesswork and surmising (hence not quite rocket science - wait a minute - isnt science "guessing" first? Oh forget it!) but over the past years I've learned a few tricks from experience that enables me to throw everything including the kitchen sink behind a campaign to get good results. The things we learn with our little test sites etc can be immediately brought to bear to client accounts to improve their listings.

And of course you're always looking for the magic bullet....will this work will that work. I think a good seo is always thinking "do I know what i need to know?" or "I can do better, work smarter".

I might be rambling but I have been up a looooong time.....:|

 

[Aspect Investments]

Its nice to see another SEO that actually works on their own site, and is prepared to show potential clients the results of their hard work.

To many SEOs say they do not have the time to get their sites listed high in Google as they are too busy with clients sites. And when potential clients ask them to show the results they have achieved for their clients, they say "oh we cant do that as its confidential". LOL

A good SEO will always be able to show results IMO.

Advice to anyone considering taking on an SEO.

If an SEO cant show you results, either for their own site, or for clients sites, then dont hire him, or her.

 

[PintoPotts]

We have been using an SEO to promote our website for a few months now, results have been mixed.

It seems a big tactic in the market place is buying domain names that match keywords and building mini-sites to link to the site being promoted, thus increasing the crucial 'link popularity' score.

Is this an ethical practice? I have my doubts....

But if the other sites are hosted on different servers, and the content is in keeping, how would the search engines tell these sites apart from sites with genuine links?

 

[multilingual]

But if the other sites are hosted on different servers, and the content is in keeping, how would the search engines tell these sites apart from sites with genuine links?

To be valued as a link, those mini sites also have to have some inbound links, so what do you do next, build a mini-mini-site to link to the mini site?

Then the mini-mini site also needs links........

What's the point?

There is a theory that search engines will do a whois check and see if the sites are registered to the same people or company, and if so it would be devalued as a link.

It's just theoretical, but would probably be wise to register the domains under different names, different addresses, different emails........get's very complicated and in the end it is much easier just to spend time on a decent link campaign.

JB

 

[PintoPotts]

That is a fair point....and links to the mini-sites are exactly what happens...

The SEO companies who employ this tactic tend to have a big directory page on their own sites linking to each and every mini-site.

They will also have RSS News feeds on the mini sites to keep the content fresh (although I don't think search engines will take that into account).

Not sure how they would get round the WhoIs issue, they could hardly register 150 domains to different names and addresses, maybe that is how they will end up getting caught out, assuming the search engines do frown on this sort of optimisation technique.

 

[realmaverick]

You're right that google are placing more importance on links but 'relevant' links which is an important distinction.

This is in a bid to improve search results and make results MORE relevant to the search criteria.

There are so many contributing factors involved in SEO but if you take the time to learn them and implement them it's more than possible to achieve top 10 positions.

I have achieved number 1 positions for many of my websites and pages.

 

[sandpetra]

It seems a big tactic in the market place is buying domain names that match keywords and building mini-sites to link to the site being promoted, thus increasing the crucial 'link popularity' score.

Is this an ethical practice? I have my doubts....

In my opion this isnt ethical or organic. Matt Cutts says if you have a lot of "sub sites" with little or no content you should just point them to the main site.

When i mean this isnt organic, I mean the benefits you may experience from it can be dissolved overnight if the search engines change how they index pages (which happens all the time). As for this practice if the other domains aren't useful and unique content, Google will ignore it, and eventually could penalize your own main site.

Google says:

• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• If a site doesn't meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index.

And why on earth would you pay all that money for registering 100's of domains. This is just lazy seo that used to work "yesterday", and still works to some extent on Yahoo.

An SEO should be writing articles and adding content to your site and optimising navigation and registering you with different directories (not ones they own!)

PS - Of course if all the domains are full of unique content then you have nothing to worry about (but somehow I doubt it) - PM me the company's name it doesn't start with L does it?

 

[realmaverick]

Thumbs up Sandpetra

 

[sandpetra]

An timely interview with Matt Cutts (Google super employee) about the Future of SEO at Search Engine Land:

• Here's a synopsis
• Here's the geek version

"Personalization is the topic that seems to be drawing all the attention right now, but the fact is localization may be a bigger immediate concern for the optimization industry. This is another point I touched on with Matt".

Basically this just confirms what we've discussed in previous posts and what I harp on about my seo blog.

Put simply - Use, Learn and get better at social networking site advertising and build better sites, for visiots, not only Google, making sure you're optimising for the geographic regions you are targetting. It can be this easy for some businesses.

 

[PintoPotts]

Great comments and YES - the SEO does begin with an 'L'....

6 months in and pretty mixed results....