For years now there has been a battle between the various components of online marketing: search engine optimisation (SEO), content, user experience and design.
Each group of practitioners in turn have had strong case studies to support the argument for siphoning more money towards them and away from other disciplines. This has more often than not been a very healthy way to move forward with each team trying to outdo the other.
Working in a big agency for some time gave a lot of insight into this. In fact for many years big agencies have moved forward as successfully as their clients with this dynamic. But this dynamic is changing.
Online marketing is still an unregulated space.
There are obviously boundaries when advertising, that subset of marketing is used, but when it comes to what tactics are deployed it’s still the decision of other individuals in this unregulated space.
This makes every decision subjective and sometimes clients can suffer as a result, particularly when dealing with a lack of experience.
This year however Google has made some very big changes that affect the online marketing world deeply.
The art, or science, of SEO has always been about staying one step ahead of the algorithm and exploiting this knowledge to benefit a clients’ business.
The essence of this success, the crux around which all SEO activity pivots, has always been the keyword. The first activity conducted in SEO is to define the keywords, and the last check box in the on-going loop of SEO is how well the keyword is performing compared to the previous month.
As entrepreneur, author and journalist John Batelle recently said: the era of the keyword is coming to an end. Google must have been listening as they have served 2 master strokes to help cement this idea:
1) Since the beginning of 2011 Google’s own analytics platform, Google Analytics, has not been passing back organic keyword data for users logged in to their Google account. There is really no reason for them to hide this information. Google state that it’s a security issue and they are doing it to protect us. Go figure. Now we have less and less of an idea of what keywords are working.
2) Since the Penguin updates from May and June of this year Google has clamped down on the over-use of the keyword within the anchor text link to a website. The practice of SEO has always had keyword targeted link building at its heart, as Google’s ranking factors have historically placed a lot of emphasis on the use of anchor text. What we are seeing now is Google starting to abandon anchor text as a major ranking signal, even to the extent where the over-use of optimised anchor text can have a detrimental effect on your rankings.
So the battle lines are moving forward beyond where the SEO’s once stood and favouring more the disciplines of content, user experience and design. Today, if conduct these activities correctly, SEO success will follow.
Keywords are still important and they will still be there in your (relevant, researched) content, but how good the user experience of your well designed website is, is now paramount and also factored into Google’s algorithm with what is perceived to be, growing importance.
About James Christie
Interesting post, I agree that SEO has moved on and now (and probably always should have) included content creation and social media engagement. Keyword research will be something that I will do for the foreseeable future, it just may get harder to get accurate traffic estimates.
This is grown up stuff I should know if I’m to develop my 2 month old writing website successfully, so thanks for this, though I’m still a long way from fully understanding the tricks and etiquette of the trade!
When Google Penguin and Panda updated by google both hurts many owners of site/blog and many other things are also going important to see your site in top on major search engines.
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Interesting post there! Yes! SEO has changed so much in 2012. Keyword research was something I was into all these years, but I think it just won’t do in the near future.
What kinds of developments do you think we’ll see in terms of local search/local SEO? I think there’s potential for some interesting stuff there, as more people start to pay more and more attention to it and spend more time and money optimizing for local searches.
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Hi Jyothis,
Thanks for the positive feedback. In terms of local search, we’ve already seen quite a few developments in recent months with the Venice update now integrating local search more aggressively which I personally think can only be a good thing. Also there was the switchover from Google Places to Google Plus which is something everyone involved in local SEO should be on top of.
A lot of the time when we think local SEO, we think of smaller companies who probably don’t have the largest of marketing budgets. Making sure you site is mobile and tablet friend would be good investment for business of all sizes. When people are doing location based searches when they are on the move, an easy to use mobile site could make all the difference.
Hi James,
Couldn’t agree with you more : If the right steps and (white) tactics is followed along with a properly planned marketing campaign is almost sure to produce value in terms of exposure and growing your networks on various channels, both social- and digitally.
I must say SEO in the older days was so easy .. Just build links and you get good ranks but not just link building is not enough. you have to do a lot of thing to rank well. Nice post buddy.
I agree, it’s because of the blackhat people that are trying to outdone Google. The game is changing, so does the people. We need to adapt and move on, rather than whining and wait for result.
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Hi Puneet,
I agree that SEO in the old days was easier in terms of less factors to focus on, however at the same time we should feel more liberated.
Rather than chasing the algorithm, we can now take a step back and look at things more openly rather than focusing solely on building text links.
Hi James,
The panda and penguin updates from Google have affected a lot of bloggers, even professional ones for that matter. I’m not sure about the keyword coming to an end thing because everyone who uses a search engine still uses certain strings for their search query which of course are our keywords. Maybe I don’t look too far ahead, but I simply think that it’s just best to adapt as each changes to Google’s algorithms are made and not look at what is presumably still in the future.
Hi Felicia,
I agree that users will still continue to use keywords or certain string to search. It’s the nature of how search engines work. I think there is now an inherent danger for people in SEO to chase keywords. Both marketers and bloggers alike should begin to start moving beyond the keyword.
Keyword stuffing on site, thin content and poor site structure based around targeting keywords, and of course link building using keywords as anchor text have all been common tactics that are way to prevalent in SEO.
These days, employing these sort of tactics are more likely to be detrimental to your rankings.
Being aware of keywords is obviously not an issue when we are writing content, but writing content purely for the intention of targeting keywords is practice that is less likely to work.
Thanks for the wounderful post,its very interesting and great tips for new bloggers
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Cannot believe I missed this post and video. I just did a five part series on this very topic. I think we need keywords because that has a lot to do with communication not just SEO. It is no secret that reputation lends clarity to writing. It is clear that Google is forcing us more towards adopting new technology that goes beyond words. To the very structure of our websites/apps.
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