To Anyone Who Thinks Google Knows Their Game

[Santhor]

Here is an interesting article:

The imminent death of SEO has been a hot topic amongst SEO professionals for quite some time now. Some SEO professionals worry that their careers are in jeopardy since search engines are continually making improvements to their technologies. Search engines are in the process of completely revamping their ranking strategies to fight spammers and improve user experience. For example, Google is currently improving intent and behavior-based search in order to provide more relevant search results. So what does this all mean for the future of SEO? Is the death of SEO an inevitable outcome of the advancement of search engines?


People have been predicting the end of SEO since the very beginning. While it?s certain that things on the SEO front are always changing and that search engines are getting smarter, SEOs will continually adapt to these changes just as they have in the past. As long as search engines list websites without requiring the websites to pay a fee, SEO will exist.


Google?s Improvements and What They Mean for the Future of SEO


In the quest to fight spam and improve user experience, Google is in the process of implementing a series of changes in behavior and intent-based search. Every person who conducts a search for a particular term will have different results based on their location and search history. As a result of these changes, search engine optimization have to switch from only targeting keywords to focus more on increasing traffic and conversions. A possibility is that link building will become far less important in the future of SEO because Google will determine the value of a website based on how visitors engage with it. The ultimate goal of websites will be to provide compelling content that entices visitors to read, share, bookmark, and so on.



Social input through voting is another feature that search engines are tinkering with in order to provide user-controlled rankings. Search engine users might have the chance to vote for sites they like and sites will get ranked based on such votes. The model will be similar what?s seen on social voting sites like Digg and Reddit. Of course, search engines will have to find a way to ensure that votes are made naturally in order to prevent black hat SEOs from fooling the search engine bots.


Google and other search engines are raising the bar in SEO. Initially, this will make it harder for SEO professionals to do their job but the end result is positive. Spammers and black hat SEOs will have more difficulty succeeding in their unscrupulous efforts and search engine users will be provided with content that is more relevant.


Humans, Not Machines


As always, the aim of webmasters and SEO professionals should be to appeal to humans. People spend so much time trying to trick the search engines that they forget who they are ultimately serving: people! Your site should be optimized but your priority should always be to fulfill needs and provide solutions. Considering the direction that SEO is going, human actions and behavior will ultimately determine rankings. Your SEO success depends on your ability to engage people through great content and social media marketing.

You may think this has to do with Penguin et al. However, this article is from June 2, 2009!!!!!!

So, please do not buy into the "Google are smarter than us, they have all the best brains in the world" crap.

Yes, the collective intelligence of hundreds if not thousands of Google engineers is greater than mine and yours.

But the collective intelligence of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of marketers like you and me are far greater than theirs!

TL;DR: Stop believing BS and keep hammering!!

 

[Allnightlong]

Haha, thanks for posting! Of course scare tactics are one of the biggest weapons in googles arsenal in their "fight against webspam".
It is by far the most resource-efficient way if they can make seos (especially BH seos) give up folllowing their strategy by tricking them into believing that google knows and detects everything.

 

[dufc1983]

Human V Machine.....bring it on agent smith

 

[Santhor]

Yeah mate, that's exactly my point. They have been employing the same tactics for years and people are buying them. And then there are those who call going against G "unethical" which drives me crazy.

I've posted it to let people see that nothing is new in SEO.

Haha, thanks for posting! Of course scare tactics are one of the biggest weapons in googles arsenal in their "fight against webspam".
It is by far the most resource-efficient way if they can make seos (especially BH seos) give up folllowing their strategy by tricking them into believing that google knows and detects everything.

 

[Santhor]

Hell yeah

Did you see my red pills by the way? I can't find them anywhere

Human V Machine.....bring it on agent smith

 

[thejake]

The point you're actually making is that ill-informed speculation about what Google's up to, what they'll do next and what to do about it isn't a new phenomenon. People who fail at SEO or want to sell SEO services have been desperately hoping for "social signals" to become the new backlink for years, in the meantime Google's backed away from Twitter, feuded with Facebook, and most of the remainder of the web 2.0-scape have failed or faded.

 

[Santhor]

All the points you're making are correct mate, misinformation and scare tactics do not work only in Google's favor, they are also fed and used by service providers.

The point I'm really trying to make here is that most people are experiencing an utterly unnecessary paralysis by believing the "end of SEO" stuff.

Sure, Google is evolving but so is SEO and BH. Change is constant, and I accept it. What I'm saying is that the game is never over, no matter how loud they blow their trumpets.

I quoted that article (and it's a drop in the ocean) because it is funny how it could have been written in April, 2012 or yesterday.

The point you're actually making is that ill-informed speculation about what Google's up to, what they'll do next and what to do about it isn't a new phenomenon. People who fail at SEO or want to sell SEO services have been desperately hoping for "social signals" to become the new backlink for years, in the meantime Google's backed away from Twitter, feuded with Facebook, and most of the remainder of the web 2.0-scape have failed or faded.

 

[highl4nder]

With billions in their pockets and the top graduates in the world working for them, I'm sure they have a few things up their sleeves...

 

[seo-addict]

Our job is to outsmart PhDs. You do not outsmart them by listening to what they say. Only fools play that game. We crack their algorithms and win massive. This is the way of true BH warriors.

 

[Santhor]

Indeed. People are really underestimating the collective intelligence of thousands of individuals who are working around the clock and the total monthly/yearly investment we are making

 

[Scritty]

Here is an interesting article:



You may think this has to do with Penguin et al. However, this article is from June 2, 2009!!!!!!

So, please do not buy into the "Google are smarter than us, they have all the best brains in the world" crap.

Yes, the collective intelligence of hundreds if not thousands of Google engineers is greater than mine and yours.

But the collective intelligence of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of marketers like you and me are far greater than theirs!

TL;DR: Stop believing BS and keep hammering!!

Yup - and I can show you articles very similar from 2004, and ones with the same gist without the mention of social signals (casue there weren't any) from 2002.
Posted a couple of links to these old articles last week.

But nothing compares to days when google started and wiped Lycos, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo out.

"You need links?..How the feck do you get those"? SEO is DEAD

Remember back 12+ years ago there were virtually no "bookmarks", blogs, guest books - no link directories, linked video sites, - In fact little or none of anything.
To get a link you had to ask a webmaster on another site for one... by email. That was for ONE LINK!
And building a site was a royal pain in the ass. Frontpage...raw HTML? total browser none compatibility? FTP every single piece of content only to have it look completely different and as far away from WYSISYG as it's possible to imagine.
These days within 5 minutes of deciding on a new domain name you've pressed a button on your hosts Cpanel and installed WP, changed the theme and added some SEO plugins to get you going.
12 years ago you were still trying to get the server to accept your FTP password and user name becasue for some reason it needed a prefix that the host/provider had neglected to tell you about. And only then could you start the painstaking process of writing your own site...yourself...from the ground up

"Social media" blogging, link building tools - virtually none of that existed. But you had to have links to rank when Google introduced Larry's algo.

Some call that the "golden age of SEO" - and it was - partly because 75% of the lazy feckless cheap SEO guys who thought getting links was impossible - ragequit within 6 months of Google taking over

"QQ Boo hoo"

I read now about these updates that are going to wipe out SEO and think back to the "gotta have links" apocolypse
Sure they are....now go have a nice warm drink and a sit down.

I love these changes like the mad Colonel loves the "smell of napalm in the morning".
It means another raft of ragequitters - less competition for a while - and more money for those of us who adapt and survive.

Scritty

 

[Serp_Pimp]

Love the fact that this article came out in 09 and sites get ranked daily.

TL;DRing to the bank maddafakaaaazzz

 

[mr meme]

This sound interesting, and i have lots of reading to do on this forum! Though i don't which to follow, google or the marketers.

 

[psytrance]

OP, well said mate, well said.... its getting more harder every day but at the end we all survive if we adapt our strategies

Scritty

scritty, good info you keep sharing for BHW....do you run a blog???

 

[TheLinkGuy]

seo has been fucking "dying" for years....

guess what, it is still as big (and bigger) then when those original claims were made. guess what will happen? SEO will evolve just like it has before.

social signals become more relevant? than so will creating fake social profiles and building them out extensively. remember paid links? well then here comes more prevelance to paid tweets/pins/etc.

the point is that as long as search engines are a huge source of traffic SEOs will figure out how to do what they do best.

 

[garrido]

Long life to BH!

 

[Scritty]

OP, well said mate, well said.... its getting more harder every day but at the end we all survive if we adapt our strategies



scritty, good info you keep sharing for BHW....do you run a blog???

Yeah - it's in my sign most of the time.

 

[jennym]

Remember back 12+ years ago there were virtually no "bookmarks", blogs, guest books - no link directories, linked video sites, - In fact little or none of anything.
To get a link you had to ask a webmaster on another site for one... by email. That was for ONE LINK!

Haha... I remember those days. Man I made some ugly sites.

Jenny

 

[conrulez]

I remember making changes and watching rankings change INSTANTLY with altavista!

Ahhh...Those were the days! If I only knew then what I know now...LOL

And of course, Scritty is oh so right....as usual.

 

[procam]

That's why I'm getting back into the SEO game because that exact article. Not that I saw this article before but I've been watching the trends in SEO for some time and YOUR RIGHT they don't change at all.. They seem to have a five year cycle for pumping fear into web spammers with BS updates and Matt Cunts fear mongering PR interviews.

Thanks for the article OP!