Is Traditional SEO Dead?

jclayc | May 26th, 2006 - 3:17 pm

I was driving to work the other day and the (perhaps cliche) phrase “[tag]SEO is Dead[/tag]” came to mind… why?

I was thinking about the basic tenets of search engine optimization set forth as I came up in the [tag]web development[/tag] world during the 90s and early 00s. In that model, a SEO’s job is to make sure that:

  1. the website is structurally suited to receive search engine spider and real-world user traffic. In other words, just make sure the code and navigation isn’t mucked up.
  2. manipulate [tag]on-page ranking factors[/tag] like your site’s domain name, META tags, the ratio of keywords to overall content (aka [tag]keyword density[/tag]) and ALT tags. (also see SEOChat.com’s new article “Are Meta Tags Extinct?“)
  3. submit to the search engines
  4. check rankings and repeat the whole process again

Within the past year or so, the rules have been significantly changing as the search engines’ [tag]ranking algorithms[/tag] adapt to the efforts of marketers to manipulate their listings. The days are mostly gone when sites full of filler text and carefully-calculated keyword densities rank well within the search engines – well, except for MSN, but that’s another story…

How have things changed? There are a few major points now focused upon by the search engines, particularly Google:

  1. ongoing [tag]content development[/tag]
  2. site “authority” on a topic
  3. a linear, time-based view of [tag]site development[/tag]

Yes, it’s still important to make sure your code is clean and crawlable by the spiders. Yes, it’s still important that you actually talk about the keywords you want to be found for as the “old” [tag]SEO rules[/tag] would dictate. BUT… the sites gaining top spots in the search engine results pages ([tag]SERPs[/tag]) go one step farther in that they have reached out to the world at large with useful information or utilities and, in turn, the number of citations and incoming links to a site grow, conferring “authority” upon that site. (In other words, if you have good content, people will link to it. If people are linking to it, it must be good content… right?)

The best search engines are also applying a timeline-based view of a site’s development and using that to gauge the confidence they have in a website. Fly by night, one shot SEO schemes just don’t work anymore… detailed profiles of a website are now maintained, recording the domain registration period, the growth rate of the site, the link popularity of the site over time and even the other activities of the website’s owner. So, basically, Google and others are watching to see how quickly your site “takes off”. Did it gain [tag]incoming links[/tag] too quickly? If so, that’s a penalty. Is the site hosted in a “bad neighborhood” where adult or gaming sites are also hosted? Have there been lots of changes to the website ownership information in the past? All of these things come together to paint a picture that helps search engines not only map the site’s physical structure but it fills in the history of the site… its reputation. Notice the new language we’re using to describe SEO: authority, reputation and development.

Traditional SEO may be dead, but it has been replaced by more [tag]traditional marketing[/tag] ideas like i) offering visitors quality content they can use; ii) building of [tag]brand reputation[/tag] & authority; and iii) the importance of developing an ongoing relationship with site visitors.

Have a happy Memorial Day weekend… and take a moment to remember those who have served our country.

Relevant Resources

[tags]SEO for law firms[/tags]

.mobi Top Level Domain Preps Us for the Mobile Web

jclayc | May 24th, 2006 - 12:22 pm

So what’s this “.mobi” top level domain name (TLD) I’m hearing about? The web works with a number of top level domains… like .com, .net, .org, etc. A new one was approved in July 2005 that establishes the .mobi TLD for websites coded to deliver content to [tag]mobile devices[/tag] like [tag]PDAs[/tag] and [tag]intelligent cell phones[/tag]. Sponsored by the Nokia Corporation, Vodafone Group Services Limited and Microsoft, this proposal certainly did have quite a few influential voices behind it… perhaps this is the reason why this TLD was approved while others have struggled for approval in the past. From what I’m reading, these are expected to be opened for public use “in the second half of 2006″.

Interestingly, I’ve also found an article from [tag]Tim Berners-Lee[/tag] of the W3C, the [tag]web standards[/tag] organization. In his article New Top Level Domains Considered Harmful, he states that, “There are specific ways in which the “.mobi” breaks the [tag]Web architecture[/tag] of links, and attacks the universality of the Web.” With this decision, his points are worth considering but essentially moot.

I’m a part-time [tag]domain name speculator[/tag] myself… having bought and sold hundreds of names in the past. I’m interested in seeing how this new TLD pushes the use of mobile devices forward, perhaps finally bringing them up to the ~world of tomorrow~ expectations given to us by the manufacturers. If .mobi catches on, the new “real estate” on the web will certainly be valuable. My name is on the list for a few choice [tag].mobi domain names[/tag]… we’ll see if I get them!

Relevant Resources

[tags].mobi,.mobi TLD,.mobi top level domain[/tags]

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