SEO is not dead (yet).
Or: “Why is content king?”
Earlier today, a Mashable article talked about the coming end of SEO. “What? Does that mean my business is going to get extinguished?” According to Mashable, it would seem so:
Now SEO may be going the way of Megalodon, a 100-foot shark rumored to exist but mostly accepted to have gone extinct a million years ago. If it isn’t functionally dead, it’s certainly in the sick-house. Google does not especially want the SEO industry playing games with its rankings, and what Google wants, especially in a case like this, Google gets.
But hold on, doomsayers, we’re still a long way from that.
If you think about SEO the way it was done in the old days (all about meta tags and keyword stuffing), then yes, SEO is dead. But the mentality has shifted — nowadays, content is king.
However, a lot of businesses still make money selling a “special” kind of SEO which can magically boost your website to the first page. And these businesses know that people like solutions that involve little work and deliver big results — pretty much like snake oil — in spite of all the evidence saying otherwise.
If you’re one of these businesses, then yes, SEO is dead for you.
Let’s go back to what SEO really is.
Google wants to deliver the most relevant pages for our search terms. This means that pages whose content is closely related with our search terms, will rank higher. It seems fair to say that if you write great content intended for humans and not robots who crawl the pages, you’ll end up better ranked.
Even though we will never know the algorithm they use, I can say that this is the aspect which Google will keep on improving: the relevancy of the page for people and not for robots.
In this way, you can implement a Search Engine Optimization strategy, which is closely knit with the content strategy. Each page should be about one single topic; titles should contain the keywords of the topic you’re discussing; the body copy should be about your topic, while not repeating your topic keywords too often; etc. All of this information is available for free on Google, ironically.
Why SEO isn’t dead.
Mashable states:
SEO is not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder and eventually will most likely be next to impossible — because Google’s algorithms are always a step ahead of the marketers trying to game them. And with no keyword reporting, a major support system for SEO has been, quite simply, taken away.
Successful marketers don’t try to game Google. Marketers who don’t have the slightest idea of what they’re doing nor a long-term strategy, do (think JCPenney or BMW.de). Like I said, it’s all about the content, because content is what matters for the reader.
Furthermore, the absence of the keyword reporting tool shouldn’t trouble SEO gurus on a budget. You can still go to AdWords to get an idea of the search volume for a specific keyword. You can put yourself in the shoes of the person who does the search and think how would you do it. You can tap into communities and do surveys. Just bring out that creativity and understand that SEO is about much more than just “tools”.
If you want to rank high on Google, build a good site and market it the best you know how.
Ultimately, the days of the Internet “tricks” and “hacks” are coming to an end, as more and more competition joins the web. The best you can do, is to go the other way and aim for the best possible product/service — nothing better than creating customer advocacy.
