Is SEO dying? or becoming less effective?

Search engine marketing.
P.S: Please read the etire thread before you post

 

I think a lot of shaddy SEO tactics are dying because it really sucks to get your site banned from the biggest search engine in the world. I think SEO in terms of following guideline rules and making good usefull sites will be around for a long time.

 

SEO rocks and makes heaps of cash for those that understand it. I liken site success to horse racers - the more entries you have, the more chance you have of winning. I think it needs to be balanced with design / programming / content. Over all, damn, a well optimied site can make you 20k+ a month with zero marketing spend - then you can travel anywhere you want. Smart people are making heaps and its all through natural Search Placement. My aim is to get to 10k a month for now - then I'm off through europe and Asia for a year - yeah! - progress bar 65% - Is SEO dead - seems to be enough people doing it.....

 

My Google Prediction:
I predict that one of the following things will happen over the next few months (or very soon):
1. Google will stop counting reciprocal links completely
2. Google will heavily discount reciprocal links and sites that mainly strive on heavy recip link building will see rock bottom SERPs
3. Recip links over a certain limit will be discounted. So, if say 20% of your incoming links are recips it would be better than a site that has the same number and quality of IBLs but 80% of those are recips.

 

Sources??

 

Didn't you see the :rolling me eyes: icon??

Anyway, this is based on what I would do if I were Google .... and is also the most logical next step. At the moment, backlinks are very important (so is content yes, but BLs are extremely important). No Backlinks, no SERPs, simple! And every SEO (actually everybody) knows this and so, most people are heavily exchanging links trying to get more and more BLs to them. It's really easy for Google to identify which BLs are one-way and which ones are reciprocal. As reciprocal links are obviously not natural, Google will sooner or later start discounting these links. It is bound to happen some day. The only thing that's not clear is how much Google will discount these links and will they be discounted for every site or just the ones that completely rely on reciprocal links.

 

I disagree. There are whole industries where all the sites are relying on reciprocal links and you won't be able to get a link without giving a link. So this theory doesn't look very reasonable to me.

 

Ummm ... that's why those industries need blogs ...

 

The whole point behing Google Pagerank when it was set-up years ago was that Google would decide how "valuable" a site is based on the number of BLs to it. Each link would be counted as a "Vote" for the site and the more the votes, the higher the pagerank and the better the SERPs.

Although reciprocal linking has been working well for people for a while, it isn't natural linking. A lot (or most) of recip link exchanges happen only because both sites want to gain some PR from each other and not because they feel that the other site is good enough to link to and will help their customers in some way. In other words, Reciprocal linking is NOT the same as Natural Linking and sooner or later, Google will start discounting recip links a little or even completely.

 

my prediction, google becomes self aware, then somehow harnesses the internet to become Omnipotent

Soon even thinking of optimizing your site will cause a penalty, you will have to concousouly force yourself to think non spammy thoughts while you work on your site, kind of like clint eastwood in that firefox movie where he had to think in russian to fly the plane.

 

I agree with ferret.

Google will become a classifieds site more than a search engine. They will give more and more prominent positioning to Froogle and paid advertising. They've got a lot of hungry shareholders to fatten up.

 

Its just got more competitive by the day and much more calculations involved nowadays then say about 3 years back.

Its difficult to get a site to rank soon these days... but time isnt the acutal measure of SEO - The final effect is !!

Its become a game of the patient - just coz the competition has moved up so rapidly !!

Thanks.
NT

 

I remember 10 years back doing SEO - it was great - I loved infoseek, especially when you could have your url instantly added. You could even change it, then resubmit - It was only based on page factors - It was nice to have number 1's everywhere - Then they moved it to only 1 url every 24hrs - then it got more difficult - weeks!! - Pity back then I was just making $$ for stupid clients - Thank god I have learnt now - Dont think SEO is patience - it really is skill - oh and being a physic helps

 

I believe that SEO will become a lot more natural.

 

I believe that SEO will become a lot more natural. Google will do a better job sorting it out.

 

Yes SEO will improve a lot and become more difficult.

 

SEM? may be search engine marketing ...
SEO is surely gonna be more difficult task in the days to come as search giants always update their technology seeing the easy manipulations of optimizers

 

I don't think that seo is dying but it need updation in a regular manner