Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Is Dead
There I said it. The cat’s out of the bag. “But can’t we just put some keywords on our page and rank #1 in the search results on Google”. Yes and no. Yes you can and no it won’t work.
Circa 1995, web .01 – optimizing your site was as easy as falling down and getting hurt. In fact you could rank in the top 5 in any search engine you wanted with a few keywords in your browser title and a basic understanding of HTML. In 2007, the equation is much more complex. As an example, let’s do a little experiment. Go to Google, key in “click here” and check out the first ranked page. Go on, just do it…
Now that you’re back from Google’land, you might be wondering why on earth someone would want to rank #1 for the search term “click here”. And your rhetorical answer was probably – no one! Voila you’re right. Here’s the point – since Adobe ranks first in the results and no one in their right mind would want to rank for this term…unless it’s a brand name, why then is Google placing them #1 without Adobe optimizing their site for the keyword “click here”. Enter web 3.0. It’s social out there.
Social marketing is alive and well and the above example shows just that fact. Yes you can put keywords on your page, however, you need social resources (people and company’s) pointing links to your site (social marketing). Without such, you’re dead in the water.
Let’s look at a test page we created to demonstrate that keywords alone do nothing to improve your rankings. Click here, notice the browser title “Click Here - Attention Google, please rank this page #1 in your search results for the keyword term Click Here.” Now notice the excessive use of the keyword on the page. Guess what, there isn’t a snowballs chance in Global warming that this test page will show up in the first 100 pages of Google’s search results for “Click Here”.
So is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) really dead? It depends on who you ask, however, by typical definition among nearly 85% of company’s claiming to do SEO, yep it is dead. Thus the reason you won’t think “can’t we just put some keywords on our page and rank #1 in Google” anymore. As a suggestion, make sure your SEO/SEM Agency does more than throw keywords on your site - otherwise, you’re SEO is dead before the ship sank.