Where's SEO heading ?
- Thread starter nomak
- Start date
These last couple of weeks, I haven't been neck deep in client work - just some light projects that have given me more time to step back and look at the search landscape.
I feel like I've allowed myself over the last 1.5 - 2 years to just mechanize search. Basically amassing processes, keeping an ear to the ground for impending turbulence, and eeking by/getting lucky or getting full on fucked.
The little gif c0ck inserts into these threads with Elf running around the revolving door is a perfect illustration.
I literally got to the point of saying out loud: "Search (mainly SEO) isn't marketing, it's just technical stuff."
But... now that seems stupid to me. I can see absolutely NO truth in throwing up a bunch of shitty articles on a site, buying a bunch of half ass links, and calling that SEO.
Instead - I'm more interested in treating my sites the way I did before I started doing search. As Assets. One feeds the other, and all function to be TOP (not top 10) of their market (not keyword).
Now, I'm more interested in inventing ways to get my competitors to link to me without either knowing it, or being able to help it. Authority sites WANTING to talk about my content... NEEDING to talk about my content to stay relevant.
My whiteboard doesn't look like a checklist anymore. It looks like a web of fucking mystery.
OP Asked where SEO is headed. For me, SEO is turning into a way to get OFF search engines, rather than constantly trying to stay ON them.
I'll call it Search Engine OFFtimization.
I feel like I've allowed myself over the last 1.5 - 2 years to just mechanize search. Basically amassing processes, keeping an ear to the ground for impending turbulence, and eeking by/getting lucky or getting full on fucked.
The little gif c0ck inserts into these threads with Elf running around the revolving door is a perfect illustration.
I literally got to the point of saying out loud: "Search (mainly SEO) isn't marketing, it's just technical stuff."
But... now that seems stupid to me. I can see absolutely NO truth in throwing up a bunch of shitty articles on a site, buying a bunch of half ass links, and calling that SEO.
Instead - I'm more interested in treating my sites the way I did before I started doing search. As Assets. One feeds the other, and all function to be TOP (not top 10) of their market (not keyword).
Now, I'm more interested in inventing ways to get my competitors to link to me without either knowing it, or being able to help it. Authority sites WANTING to talk about my content... NEEDING to talk about my content to stay relevant.
My whiteboard doesn't look like a checklist anymore. It looks like a web of fucking mystery.
OP Asked where SEO is headed. For me, SEO is turning into a way to get OFF search engines, rather than constantly trying to stay ON them.
I'll call it Search Engine OFFtimization.
It's funny, I feel like the best long term plan in terms of SEO might be building microsites on obscure topics. If I was Google, I'd probably be giving more and more weight to brand names. (which almost certainly won't be you unless you can build something on the same kind of level as say, Sears or Capital One.)
I'd say organic is pretty important to them.
Adsense partner sites bring in $10-$12 billion a year. Just under 30% of their revenue.
ahrefs gives some great insight into the impact of organic and ppc trends for a number of brands and non-brands. But even the brands got hit hard like walmart.com but not as bad as other bigger branded affiliate sites like carinsurance.com. Like said previously, organic doesn't make big G money so hitching a free ride was really never free and it's worse now. Can the algo be manipulated? Sure but it's all short lived, then it's back to spending more time trying to tweak. Time is money and the SEO ROI is pretty piss poor these days. I do however believe the future will deal with more structured data within documents (eg. microformats) and structured catalog schemas, but it will all be big G's interest to drive ads and ecommerce.
I kindly disagree with you. People may not consciously discern what they are clicking on, but once they start getting irrelevant results (i.e Google starts sucking) they will quickly move on. The search engine is the core of their ecosystem. Once people move onto another search engine, they are more likely to start using their products and services to keep everything in one place.
That's true, but in accounting terms the revshare on Adsense is a cost of goods/service sold (they buy the traffic from publishers and sell it to advertisers) whereas search is all profit. As a business, it makes sense to increase sales of your higher margin service (in this case, search). They have to balance things to keep visitors satisfied, and that's why they push so hard for quality ads. Their goal is to get paid for as many clicks as possible, and if they can squeeze organic further down the page without losing market share, they will.
I agree, they definitely can't upset their users, but we tend to think of ourselves as regular users and we're not. I don't remember anyone outside of IM bitching about Panda/Penguin or any other shit, but I do know when they want to look something up they say they're going to Google it. As long as the average person doesn't see a noticeable drop off in quality, they won't even notice that less of the SERP's are organic.
The question isn't whether an algorithm can be manipulated. Any search engine algorithm will always be open to manipulation. The real question is whether the algorithm will be sufficiently predictable and stable for any manipulators (SEOs) to bring a positive ROI. The answer used to be a much more resounding Yes than it is today.
<rant>Despite what anyone says about "build quality sites," SEO just isn't as predictable as it used to be, and mere "high quality content" never did and never will bring in traffic by itself. I won't out my own (former) SEO site on a public forum, but let me tell you that each post had 3000+ words of Ivy League educated content on it, complete with images and video, and after Google manually and randomly shuffled around their rankings for SEO keywords about 16 months ago, the site was never to be seen again. SEO isn't predictable and it is far from a science. There is randomness built right into it and although I don't believe that will put SEOs out of business, I do believe it will continue to weed out more and more would-be internet entrepreneurs.</rant>
<rant>Despite what anyone says about "build quality sites," SEO just isn't as predictable as it used to be, and mere "high quality content" never did and never will bring in traffic by itself. I won't out my own (former) SEO site on a public forum, but let me tell you that each post had 3000+ words of Ivy League educated content on it, complete with images and video, and after Google manually and randomly shuffled around their rankings for SEO keywords about 16 months ago, the site was never to be seen again. SEO isn't predictable and it is far from a science. There is randomness built right into it and although I don't believe that will put SEOs out of business, I do believe it will continue to weed out more and more would-be internet entrepreneurs.</rant>
I am new to this forum, and do not cast myself as an expert, or offer anything other than an honest opinion. I suppose this will introduce me lol.
Seo, as it has been for the past years at least, is definitely dead. Reading through Seo Moz, and various Google tit bits has left me with that impression. The value of links that were staple diets for seo's have been seriously de valued. Article links, press releases, Web 2.0 page creations, etc etc. Very few links, that can be created, in any shape or form, are actually worth a pot of piss. Not long term. We still hold on to guest posting at the moment, though there is no guarantee that that will not soon be regarded as inappropriate. The above links may well rank you for some low competition keywords. There may be a strategy to using these methods to rank for loads of low level competition keywords, but I think this will soon be a road to nowhere.
Google, the main search engine worth ranking for, wants authority. Plain and simple. This cannot be manipulated. It wants content that it sees people wanting to read, and following back to a site or page. It just so happens that it is getting better at making this happen. Links need to be in places that can attract readers, followers, social media signals etc. That is hard to create. Articles and their ilk can all be generated and therefore are almost zero in value beyond that of diversity or maybe getting Google to a page.
Clients need to realise that the days of spending a few hundred pounds, or dollars to rank their sites are really over. Money needs to be spent making sites into authority sites. Content from said sites needs to be attracting "respect" from other authority sites. The sites you cannot spam links onto. Links need to carry traffic, so they need to offer genuine interest to those you are looking to catch. In other words, proper marketing and promotion needs to be done, Proper Company Promotion. This is expensive, but the only way you can compete organically in the search engines. Advertising to gain traffic to your site is going to be far more attractive to site owners, and remember that is what makes Google a lot of money.
The nuts and bolts of it is simply this. People will need to do real work on their sites to get up the rankings. Buying and creating links will not be of much value for very much longer. Local seo may well offer some chinks of light through citation creations and localised promotion to the old fashioned "seo expert".
I am much more interested in getting companies to write as much informative and useful information as possible and put it on their sites, as well as use other content to spread around niche related and traffic rich sites to enhance their sites authority. Much much harder, and also more expensive, yet what is the point in selling a dream that is becoming more and more like a bad gamble?
Seo, as it has been for the past years at least, is definitely dead. Reading through Seo Moz, and various Google tit bits has left me with that impression. The value of links that were staple diets for seo's have been seriously de valued. Article links, press releases, Web 2.0 page creations, etc etc. Very few links, that can be created, in any shape or form, are actually worth a pot of piss. Not long term. We still hold on to guest posting at the moment, though there is no guarantee that that will not soon be regarded as inappropriate. The above links may well rank you for some low competition keywords. There may be a strategy to using these methods to rank for loads of low level competition keywords, but I think this will soon be a road to nowhere.
Google, the main search engine worth ranking for, wants authority. Plain and simple. This cannot be manipulated. It wants content that it sees people wanting to read, and following back to a site or page. It just so happens that it is getting better at making this happen. Links need to be in places that can attract readers, followers, social media signals etc. That is hard to create. Articles and their ilk can all be generated and therefore are almost zero in value beyond that of diversity or maybe getting Google to a page.
Clients need to realise that the days of spending a few hundred pounds, or dollars to rank their sites are really over. Money needs to be spent making sites into authority sites. Content from said sites needs to be attracting "respect" from other authority sites. The sites you cannot spam links onto. Links need to carry traffic, so they need to offer genuine interest to those you are looking to catch. In other words, proper marketing and promotion needs to be done, Proper Company Promotion. This is expensive, but the only way you can compete organically in the search engines. Advertising to gain traffic to your site is going to be far more attractive to site owners, and remember that is what makes Google a lot of money.
The nuts and bolts of it is simply this. People will need to do real work on their sites to get up the rankings. Buying and creating links will not be of much value for very much longer. Local seo may well offer some chinks of light through citation creations and localised promotion to the old fashioned "seo expert".
I am much more interested in getting companies to write as much informative and useful information as possible and put it on their sites, as well as use other content to spread around niche related and traffic rich sites to enhance their sites authority. Much much harder, and also more expensive, yet what is the point in selling a dream that is becoming more and more like a bad gamble?
I have a guy in my niche who's ranking for a fairly competitive term, just under 4k searches monthly with exactly 8 footer links to this particular page from 3 domains. The owners don't even know they're linking to him, it's a "free" wordpress theme.
I guess there will always be exceptions, just how many, and how likely for your clients or business will be where the numbers fall , in my opinion of course.
I 100% without a doubt disagree. SEO will NEVER die, it's just constantly going to be evolving.
