SEO Is NOT Dead
I mean, really… Have you seen those articles and ads from those not so in the SEO-know telling you that SEO is dead? Puh-lease. SEO will never be dead. In fact, Google and the other engines encourage it… for all the right reasons. They want us to make pages easier for their spiders to crawl, and that’s what good SEO is about. Doing things the right way, not being a doofus and polluting the ‘Net.
Black Hat SEO might die, but I doubt that, too. People will always find ways to scam any system. But Google is getting stricter and wiser, and I see that as a good thing.
Image via Wikipedia
Good, solid SEO practice will never go off into that dark, dark night. Solid SEO means on-page factors, such as good titles and descriptions, using keywords properly but not stuffing them, providing easy navigation that doesn’t take visitors and spiders down dead-end or loopy “spider trap” paths, and unique, interesting content that engages readers and helps them in their day-to-day rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Off page factors, such as solid linking is important, too. Get links from creating that amazing content and other websites in your niche will link to it. Simple. You don’t have to go looking for links like that. They just come to you.
Quality directory links like DMOZ and Yahoo (though that’s a paid link, thinking at some point they may be kicked aside, as well), or other directories edited by humans, and an interactive social presence that promotes your brand are all important these days, too.
SEO will never be dead no matter what happens. Well, a team of elven robots from the planet Tech-a-licious might descend and create psychic search for us, and then… SEO might die. Naw, you’ll just have to start thinking in keywords is all and do some ancient Vulcan mind-melding maneuvers, but so….
If you think you can get your site into all 10 positions on page one via nefarious means, well… your days are numbered, my friend.
I just read an article on Forbes.com by Inder Sidhu (The Worst SEO Mistake You Can Make, March 11, 2011), which talks about Overstock.com and how they asked college student customers to link back to them from their .edu websites, which got Overstock booted from the SERPs. No-brainer there. Let’s face it… Overstock has nothing to do with .edu so they were linking outside their niche. Don’t do that.
Even J. C. Penney was nailed for buying links. What were they thinking?
The bottom line is SEO is good. The search engines think SEO is good. It’s shenanigans they don’t approve of.
SEO still rocks, and brings in all that free, targeted organic traffic. Why wouldn’t you want to learn a little?
