SEO has no future

My Definition Of SEO and How The Death Will Play Out

A few days ago I wrote about how SEO has no future. There were a lot of people who agreed and then a lot of confused people. After writing the post I thought for a bit perhaps even I was confused about what exactly SEO is. So I decided to ask all the leading SEO experts what their definition of SEO is. Basically everyone is on the same page as me (or I as them) that SEO is the human interaction with a website that makes it rank than it naturally would have. Yes that is a huge broad definition… I know.

Lets take a step back. Back in the days of altavista and webcrawler it was pretty much a spamfest. Until one day this pretty badass search engine came out named Google.

Google’s mission has always been to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Back in the early days Google claimed that there was no such thing as spam in their search engine index and if there ever was then its algorithm had failed. Then one day Google found itself very very deep in spam. Also legitimate mom and pops had no chance against the spammers who were back in action kicking Google’s butt just like they had done to every search engine before.

Google needed help. They needed a hero. It was now in their best business interest to let humans influence their search engine. Give them a bit of help on how they can better crawl their sites. Enter GoogleGuy. Google appointed a person dubbed GoogleGuy to police the forums and social sites like Slashdot and help the legitimate webmasters (in Google’s opinion) rank better in Google by the use of SEO. This worked pretty well and Google saw quite a business value in allowing humans to influence their algorithm. The only problem for Google was that this was not a long term solution.

Enter the Toolbar. This was (in my opinion) the single biggest thing that Google did to improve their search engine and they obviously saw value in it. They were paying people 1$ per install to keep track of what they were doing on the internet. Not to mention the half billion dollar deal with Firefox. With the toolbar they could tell exactly where users are going and there experiences with those websites. This mixed with Google Analytics (another awesome service) and they are getting much more valuable data about the websites.

The start of the death of SEO:

As Google started getting more and more data on sites the need for webmasters to help them greatly decreased. This Googleguy disappeared from forums but about the same time a engineer from Google named Matt Cutts appeared. His blog soon became the voice of the Google search team and instead of really giving tips and answering questions he laid down the law. In particular to paid links and paid reviews as well as other items which make Google look stupid.

The death of SEO is not going to happen overnight but it is close. I personally believe that Google will achieve their original goals and not allow humans to influence its algorithms. I know it sounds like SEO… well actually the definitions are the same thing. The difference between SEO and spam is what Google allows. There is no future in SEO and we will very soon all go back to being spammers. There is no black or white there is only SEO.

So what is the future on how sites will rank? I personally believe AdWords will be your entry point so that Google can get data on users experiences for key phrases then rank you organically accordingly. That seems to make sense.

http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/05/15/my-definition-of-seo-and-how-the-death-will-play-out/

Interesting...

 

I doubt it, really. No matter how the algorithm changes, someone out there is going to figure it out how to optimize their websites in order to rank better.

As for the Adwords part, I believe using AW to determine rankings (a.k.a. buying positions) would be like suicide for Google. They could do it secretly for a while, but once it becomes known, people would shift to Yahoo (if they don't do the same).

Google doesn't determine the whole system. There are a ton of people who use it, but let's not forget that Yahoo has more users (check compete.com) and it's worth more (check websitevaluecalculator.com) and I think it has more Alexa than Google.

 

Google as a whole is worth mountains more than Yahoo.

 

Of course - The whole thing is to adapt to the changes

Are you really sure?

I'm sorry joelmr but despite what you are saying I do prefer to be successful with google

I thought that this article was a better starting point for a SEO discussion than this

 

seo will change... but seo will always be to create websites with content that can be found.

the future is content writing creation

 

Jeremy Shoemoney said something like this as well. I kinda agree with the both of you.

 

Well, yeah, I share that thought too. All the SEO I do is for Google.

What I'm saying is that if Google starts accepting payments to be at the top of results without being marked as an advertiser, many people would stop using it. Maybe not everyone, but most of the tech-savvy/conscious people would. And website owners would stop aiming to be at the top of Google since all efforts would be in vain given that at any moment someone might send Google $1M to be at the top :s

The article is being quoted from shoemoney.

 

True, but when it comes to calculating value based on stats, Yahoo is worth more.

See: http://www.websitevaluecalculator.com/Most.Expensive.WebSites/

Quote:

1.
$7,415,127,703
yahoo.com

2.
$5,964,434,191
google.com

3.
$3,470,944,933
amazon.com

4.
$2,238,990,172
blogspot.com

5.
$2,101,422,635
myspace.com

 

yawn...the sky is falling...we have heard it all before. Even your definition of SEO is not close to the what it really is and I would like to see some quotes from your so called 'experts' that use that exact definition.

Even Google recommends ethical SEO so you blew that one also.

Adwords is the future? I think you read an article by someone else, thought it was cool link bait and are trying to hop on the bandwagon in a very unknowledgeable way.

 

Yeah, there's that. They even advise you when picking a SEO company so you don't get scammed.

 

I'd give a free link for someone to have an original f'in thought instead of copying, re-writing and posting here at DP what they read in an e-mail newsletter from MediaPost..

To the OP

Key to failure is being lazy!!!!!

 

some of the things makes sense but the whole thing would turn out to be spamming then where will all the webmasters go as you said all will have to rely on google then!

 

Instead of reply to this, i think Gray Wolf summed it up better than me...

Yes Shoemoney SEO Does Have a Future

 

Mark my words, msn will take over yahoo this year. Remember balmers words" i want googles head on a silver platter", remember this next year when the combined entity makes a move on google. If you learn one thing with maturity its that nothing and no one in life stays on top forever.

 

i will lose all my $$$ dollars per year income if google or yahoo plans to renovate or do anything weird about their algorithm...

 

WOW - this topic again. hmmmm

I doubt you asked any experts; instead, I'm sure you just read Shoemoney's post a few days after his "SEO has no future" post in which he asked a bunch of experts... then you summarized his findings.


So, you think that the Googler is dumb enough to think that it's not easy to hire a company to positively manipulate an analytics profile?

Do you think Google is dumb enough to think that I couldn't hire a company to negatively effect a website's stats?

Do you know that different kinds of websites have different stats? As an example, blogs don't typically have as many page views as some other sites. However, all sites compete for the same keywords.

Did you know that "if" Google did only go by stats, there would still be an algo that ranked sites and SEO would still exist? So you know, AdWords requires human intervention.

Did you know that content creation and understanding a sites structure increases time on site, page views, return visits, bookmarks, referrals, visitor paths etc.. etc.. etc.. meaning that someone understanding these things would still, in your future, affect organic rankings.

If Google uses AdWords, as you claim they might, what would happen with longtail words? Imagine it, "I'm sorry, you must use a search query with no more than 3 words".

I'm sorry my friend but regardless of what Google uses to rank sites organically, there will always be SEO -

 

Might want to go adjust the formula your trying to sell then,.......relying on a search engines whims is a simple plan to being bankrupt.

Diversify or die......

 

Nope! Microsoft backed down! Old news... made Yahoo's stocks go down like hell!

 

Amen to that!

 

That man should be brought up on criminal charges! He took everything I would have said right from my brain and printed it!

(Now I know why I felt so brain-dead that day. He was picking my thoughts clean!)