There’s a segment of the population whose favorite hobby is to declare that some tool, cause, media, or concept, to be “dead”. Radio is dead! Print is dead! Desktop PCs are dead! Rock and roll is dead! Society’s coroners stand by, hovering in the wings, waiting to pronounce time of death for the next big thing. The latest patient who has ostensibly come down with a case of mortality? Search Engine Optimization.

Does that toe tag read ‘SEO’?

The Mighty SEO

Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as  SEO, is the process in which your pages find their way to the top of Google when someone initiates a search. Call it Internet marketing or the online equivalent of stuffing a ballot box, but what SEO came down to was tossing together articles, press releases, and any other kind of content, stuffing it with a broad range of keywords and getting backlinks to bring people to your site. The number and quality of the links had a significant bearing on how high your site ranked in searches.

A Penguin And A Panda Walk Into A Bar…

…and they end up forcing businesses and individuals to rethink how they use SEO. Panda and Penguin are Google updates that changed algorithms designed to downgrade the search rankings of irrelevant sites. These updates (and others which followed) are game-changers, causing marketing professionals to rethink their approach.

The Currency Has Changed

Instead of backlinks and keywords, Google is looking for content; real, original content that engages, entertains, and informs the readers, who then share it with their friends and social circles. This is the new order, the new way of getting recognized. When Google sees that your content is being shared, they are confident that it’s being created by real people, not just coughed up by some spam-generating entities. That’s what Google wants, and let’s face it: ultimately that’s what the people out there want.

People and businesses who want their sites to get better search ranks have to go back to “old school” public relations. This involves reaching out to readers, getting those all-important clicks by coming up with material that people actually want to read. It means actually hiring people who know how to write, make videos or create compelling images, and turning them loose on the Internet. Yes, we’ve come full circle. Everything old is new again.

Evolve Or Perish

Is SEO dead? The answer is a conditional “no”. But Google, through its continuing updates, has laid down an ultimatum: if you flood the Internet with irrelevant content and the typical “Black Hat” SEO tactics, your site will plummet to the depths of search engine rankings. Sometimes, it may even result in removal from search results altogether.

Look at it this way: the purpose of a search engine such as Google is to provide the user with links to the best, most relevant content. With their updates, Google is telling everyone “When you put garbage out there in an effort to trick the system, it makes us look bad; so we’re tightening the noose a bit.” Here’s some more information on positioning in Google.