I've heard many people that says that Google gots so effective algoritms that its almost impossible to fool it. They've also said that SEO people usually make the site worser for google than it was before. Is that true?
I think this line from star wars sums up google's algo pretty well: the more you tighten your fist, the more star systems will slip thru your fingers. I think that is very apt. The more complex that google makes its algo's, the more spam sites seem to creep their way into the results.
IMHO, Google is indeed trying to deal more, and more with websites or webmasters that spam. But since this last Jagger incident, where good and normal websites got hit too, and so many others that spammed didn't , I think it has a long way up to the time where automatic spam algorithms could be implemented, so that humans (Google employees) wouldn't have to check the websites manually, thus making the removal process of so many other spammy websites, so long, or not at all.
I think a computer will never be smarter than a human. Humans will always find new ways to (to use your word) "fool" it or optimize for it.
I dont think good seo takes the rought to fool the search engines but rather feed them what they like to eat.
What is SEO without real content, nothing! More people promote the idea of spamming people just to display ad impressions. Sure it is every ones desire to make money, but at what cost will you do it. Search engines visitors are declining more than what most search engine companies will admit, why, because 7 out of 10 webmasters are spamming their visitors. Oh' ya, I hear not me! But face it, content that is not your original work or that you have not paid for to be unique, is spamming. When I or some other SO in charge of search indexing, finds 1 of 5 websites contain duplicate content, where as a year ago that same problem was 1 of 65, you know the problem has become really bad. Do a index on this Forum and follow all the links that are pointing outward. You will end up with nearly 4,321,700 pages that in some ways are linked to some topic or post on this Forum out of all those pages, 27% contain duplicate content that resides on more than one domain, and everyone one of those duplicate pages contains ads. Now I am not talking about a single (sentence), I'm talking about pages that contain 70% or more of the same content. To a few, SEO means doing things that makes your site shine, because it contains good honest content that you have put great effort into designing and monitoring and want to get a ranking so more people can get good information that you provide, well earning a few bucks for your hard work, to the many others, it just another form of spam!!! da!
Your base beeing ? I can pinpoint 433432 websites, in this moment (hipotheticly speaking i can pinpoint about 20, but if everyone had 20 ....), that have at least an A4 of hidden keywords in the footer, and which 50% of them, have already been reported.
no seo is not dead, even if its effects on google are wearing down google does have its own seo guidelines and there are 2 other big players that seo does still work on.
I believe SEO isn't as effective as it was before at least with Google. Now Google's main factor IMO is age of site. It's giving brownie points to older sites which help them rank better than newer sites regardless of how well they are optimized and other SEO factors taken into effect by the web-developers. Yahoo! and MSN on the other hand still give weight to on page SEO factors such keyword density h1 h2 h3 tags etc... as well as off page factors, MSN more so than Yahoo. But all in all there will always be a way to cheat the search engines... those smart enough or those with the knowing power of how-to will exploit it while others will do there best white-hat techniques and hope that it yields them top results.
Come on guys.......don't be silly. There is nothing to discuss about !!! What is SEO? Simple, making site search engine friendly so that site can reach to top position in SERPs when related querry is made. So, if you say....seo is dead.....than ....does it mean....making such site is of NO Worth?? OR Doing such practice does not help?? None !!! The work of SEO is making a site to hit top ranks....and ....YES search engines are smarter than before...no fool....no fraud...so be genuine. If you want top position..than be at top of others. If you really deserve...you will get it. http://www.seotoday.com/browse.php/category/articles/id/504/index.php So, seo can never die. Rather I should say...importance of seo is accelarating. ...