The number of results seems to be skyrocketing for any search category. More and more links are needed to get ahead on the listings. "SEO seems to be an endless chess game." as New York times put it in the recent article about SEO and journalism. So, is it a general feeling out there?
The basics of SEO always work IMHO, getting to number 1 over number 4 or 5 in rankings might take more work but top 10 positions still are achievable for many words and phrases.
Agree with wcwarren. When you've gotten the "basics" down, it's pretty easy. Just add new wrinkles when they come around and you're set.
You just tweak your sites whenever you come across a good addition to your already established SEO routine. If you've been doing it correctly before, the new wrinkles are never something major, just an addition or extraction here and there.
I tend to agree. Things are harder than a few years ago. Most of the big names now realise that there's money to be made on the net and are throwing a big portion of their marketing budgets at it. That's not to say things are impossible though, you just have to work harder!
If some big company decides to throw a big budget and big budget SEO at "their" terms, you might have to work around them. Bigger is not always necessarily better. That said, you shouldn't solely depend on SEO to bring you people. Most succesful sites say that they usually get about 10 percent of visitors from search engines.
Getting harder, or just more competition? I think there is something to be said along the lines of their being more decent SEO's out there now instead of a few years ago, but I think the tactics have remained the same for the most part.
I agree with Savant. The rules of SEO haven't changed significantly, but the amount of competition has - it has increased, and will continue to increase for the forseeable future. As with any market, increased competition makes it more difficult to capture and maintain market share. This doesn't mean that SEO is "dead" or a waste of time, however - also as with any market, the cream always rises to the top. Sam
Yes, I can see that in many website stats 10 to 20% from searches. The rest is links. Hence the importance of links again.
IMP, the so called BIG guys in every industry always stay ahead. That's why it gets difficult for new people to get their sites on the top. Also, with Google complicating its algorithm, its an endless game...
It may be getting harder - I haven't been around long enough to know. But with only a few months experience I have a couple #1 and #2 spots in Google. I won't be entering any SEO contests anytime soon, but good results are definitely attainable - especially if you are the only one in your field/keyword set putting forth a concentrated effort.
It's been more difficult to be in high ranking SERPs because of the increasing number of competition. Doing the basic optimization definitely works but with thousands or millions of competing pages, SEO people tend to do "extra" things to bring their pages an edge against the others.