Is Search Engine Optimization Stagnant?
Over the last few weeks I have had some interesting discussions with several people about the “what really works” for optimizing websites. Of course, there are as many opinions on the subject as there are people. The funny thing is that in all of the confusion there are some common themes.
Tanya Vaughn may be one of the most practiced SEO professionals in the Treasure Valley, and in a short discussion on the topic she admitted a little frustration about hearing the same old stuff at the various conferences she attends. Shortly after we chatted she posted about which upcoming event to attend. Now, while I sympathize with her frustration, here are two possible reasons I think that may cause the “same old stuff” problem (very conflicting reasons):
- Nobody really knows how SEO works, so SEO professionals basically live in an echo chamber and tell each other the the same things over and over again. How likely is this? Well, we have to assume SEO works, or at least worked (past tense), for someone. It would be quite a challenge for such a huge fallacy to survive, even in an imperfect market.
- The second possibility is that the basic principles of SEO are really the key to successful implementation, and people are still “preaching” it because the folks who have the greatest impact on an optimized site aren’t getting it right. In other words, when we all get the basics right we can move on to discovering/enacting more advanced solutions.
I prefer the second option (otherwise I would look for a different job), and as a public service I am going to give you the three things I think will most greatly impact your ability to optimize for higher search engine rankings. Prepare to be dazzled…
- Seek valuable inbound links,
- Write good and relevant content, and
- Make sure there aren’t technical issues “blocking” the search engine bots.
If this really disappointed you, I am truly sorry. Yes, there are other things you can do, but these are the key elements. If you think there are more important items, we would love to hear from you, but 90% of the results we have shown for our clients were related to one, or more, of these three items.
In conclusion, my thought is, that the reason we keep hearing the same things is because they are the things that matter most. Hard to come up with something novel if traditional works :-). Even if it gets tiring.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptOver the last few weeks I have had some interesting discussions with several people about the “what really works” for optimizing websites. Of course, there are as many opinions on the subject as there are people. … […]
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Not having lots of in-depth SEO knowledge, I really think that good content combined with a people becoming aware of it (either via links and or search engines that don’t have to deal with technical hurdles) has to be the best way to get the most attention for your site. And it should be.
My 2 cents - in my experience, good links seem to have the most impact on SEO rankings (more than even lots of great content does). People are always looking for quick, cheap options to magically get lots of traffic, but that doesn’t happen. Write interesting stuff, and make other people on the internet aware of it (via social news sites, press releases, etc.)
Now, the tricky part in all of this is when you have to relay these “truisms” to your clients who are looking to your comany for SEO help. Getting that client a website up and running is relatively easy, but expecting the rest to take care of itself obviously doesn’t do anything positive for the client’s bottom line. It’ll sit there unnoticed and silently age. Then it’ll get written off as a waste of time. Not good.
Valitic’s value to your clients (from the outside looking in) is educating your clients on what tactics will likely be most fruitful initially and then supplying them with a scorecard (and recommendations) every month letting them know how the tactics they’ve implimented are performing on a month to month basis. For companies that earnestly invest in their web presence, that should all they (and you) need to be wildly successful.