GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 26 - October 2013

Have you heard that SEO is dead? By Lee Allen A recent article in the Guardian made the very bold statement that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) “is dead,” and inferred that social media is replacing it. A number of robust arguments from the SEO community ensured a swift re- traction, including Martin Macdonald’s view, which shows that search, social and online in general are all thriving. With a continuing demand for organic search results and channel growth it’s evident that organic search isn’t dead, but one question the Guardian was subtly raising, which appears to have gone unan- swered, was whether SEO actually works. Can you still optimize a website so that its performance is improved within a search engine? Of course you can! Granted, it isn’t as basic as it once was, but sure enough, it’s still feasible. The more interesting question is: If SEO isn’t dead, what now constitutes SEO? Of course SEO is alive – it’s just evolved! SEO is a long way from a dying art. Like everything, SEO has simply evolved, requiring a change in both strategy and execution in order to succeed. Unfortunately, possibly due to the con- stantly increasing change of pace, a lot of people seem to be getting left behind. This results in people believing SEO is dying as, at best, their tactics are sim- ply not having the desired impact or, at worst, are damaging site rankings. So, where are people potentially going wrong? Let’s compare the historic tactics, which some people are still deploying, with more modern approaches which reap better rewards. On-page / technical optimization Historically the general tactic was to match keyword mentions and densities of sites ranking highly, and then up the ante for good measure. Fortunately, this phased out pretty quickly after Google made its stance on over-optimization very clear, although that didn’t stop other on- site tactics such as hidden content, cloak- ing, sneaky redirects and more. In terms of modern requirements for op- timizing on-page elements, don’t over- look keyword inclusion out of fear, but restrain yourself from being too heavy handed. If you look at the majority of competitors who rank well for certain terms, they typically still include those terms within key on-page elements – but in a natural manner. Try to do whatever you can to improve your website for both users and search engines. A well-built and correctly struc- tured website is a great starting point. Top this off by properly integrating elements which improve Google’s experience and understanding of your website, such as rich snippets, authorship and hreflang sitemaps (almost a given for big interna- tional brands), to name a few. Thinking of the search engines will inevitably help Google deem your site(s) as more legiti- mate and of higher quality. Content In the past, the main use of content was to ensure a website had a page for every keyword it wanted to rank for and, at least in the early days, it worked. Many people treated content in a similar fashion to on- page optimization – flooding copy with as many keywords and keyword variations as possible. This quickly led people to think that the more keywords the better, result- ing in almost unreadable babble on cer- tain pages. These days it is much more about legiti- mate, well-written content that people spend time reading, typically using a single page to target multiple related terms. Again, don’t fully ignore key- words but try mentioning them using a logical sentence structure, rather than shoehorning them in. While it is imperative to not have indi- vidual pages per keyword, having depth is still important to being perceived as an authority. Make sure you are covering your subject areas in depth, providing as much useful and related information as possible, rather than diversifying into un- related subjects. It goes without saying how strict Google 25 Have you heard that SEO is dead?