

SEO is Dead - wave
http://learntoduck.com/search-marketing/seo-is-dead

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webwright
This is pure and utter crap. While I agree that SEO has radically changed
(from a pure markup game to a link-building game), it's not going away. For a
very very very long time.

The real estate on SERPS (results pages) are incredibly valuable... The first
page especially so. Given that there are only 10 slots on the first page (and
only one top slot), people will leverage time, money, and expertise to get
placed there.

The rules may change, but the game isn't going anywhere.

~~~
thwarted

       While I agree that SEO has radically changed (from a pure markup game to a link-building game)
    

Changed since when? I've been receiving spam from people to "trade links" and
list my site in their "link index" for years. "link-building" is nothing new,
it's been around since it became known that Google's indexing is influenced by
external references to pages.

~~~
webwright
Since Google, pretty much. And it probably took the marketing world a while to
catch on. Certainly there are still plenty of folks who still believe that SEO
is about meta-tags.

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m0nty
"There is only one thing that breeds success, and that is passion."

And when you've learned to fake that...

Seriously, though, he doesn't make any concrete suggestions about what SEO/SMM
should be replaced by -- just "hire an internal evangelist" and get
passionate, with a mention of personal branding (which links to an article
which seems distinctly anti-personal branding). The article is like a mini-
Cluetrain Manifesto, without the timeliness.

I wrote a lengthy piece for my boss a few years ago, detailing how to improve
our websites and content for SEO purposes, advocating the use of blogs, social
networking sites, etc, etc. Response? None, just "thanks, maybe we'll talk
about this later." Then he went off and quietly hired some dodgy SEO company
to artificially inflate our websites' rankings. He was faced with the choice
of following something which was (to him) new and outlandish, or taking a safe
"bet to nothing" (on the SEO company) for a fixed sum of cash. I'm fairly sure
people like him will keep SEO specialists in business for a long time to come.

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JoelSutherland
Let a dead horse rest.

SEO is what it is. Right now it isn't such a bad thing, it is primarily a
bunch of best practices. They might seem elementary to hackers, but they are
necessary.

~~~
axod
Those practices are not 'seo practices'. They are 'usability, accessibility
practices'.

Make it easy, relevant, valuable to users, and the search engines will value
it too.

~~~
JoelSutherland
Right, but when Jane Doe finally builds a website for her offline business she
wants to figure out why she doesn't show up on search engines.

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novicegeek
In North America, Google still supplies close to 70% of web traffic (according
to study from Comscore). So SEO is still important. Now I think
learntoduck.com writes this article for "link-baiting" purposes, that is for
SEO purposes :-)

We're an SEO startup in Redwood City that allows websites to buy and sell
static text ads. Check us out at <http://www.ask2link.com> or email us at: jk
AT ask2link dot com Thank you.

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josefresco
I've never read an article by an author more out of touch of the real SEO
world than this. Maybe he needs to be punched more in the head?

Here's the formula for writing an "SEO is dead" article.

1\. Take on tech person who's not directly involved in building, maintaining
or marketing websites for a living.

2\. Send him to a conference where a panel of similar out-of-touch 'experts'
decry the death of SEO.

3\. Said tech person goes home all jazzed up about the concept and posts a
Tweet or some crappy Facebook message regurgitating what he just heard without
doing any research.

4\. Is amazed at the response (because let's face it, their swimming in
unfamiliar waters).

5\. Writes article explaining all the wonderful things he learned about SEO
and how SEO experts are scum and how the concept of SEO is dead in X years.

6\. Profit?

The point is this guy is not living in the real world, where not every site is
based on Wordpress, and not every business skyrockets to the top of Google
rankings without doing any sort of optimization.

Lesson? Stick to what you know, and don't make conclusions based on what you
hear coming from the mouths of Internet celebrities.

~~~
brk
Is "SEO" really any different than just basic "best practices" these days? I
worked for a company in the SEO business, and I have to say that 99% of it
just seemed patently obvious once you took some time to really think about the
problem.

Don't over-abuse keywords

Keep your content fresh/relevant

Make sure the link text to your content reinforces the key terms you're trying
to rank on (to the extent you have control of this).

Use sites like digg and stumbleupon to expose users to your content.

And so on. SEO is "dead" in the sense that basic HTML is "dead". It is no
longer the mysterious domain of specially trained tech individuals. SEO is
just something else that you have to know and do if you want to have any hope
of your website and company being noticed in todays consumer world.

SEO _is_ dead, but thousands of SEO consultants who are still trying to make
money by making SEO out to be more than it really is are viciously fighting
this fact.

~~~
foulmouthboy
I've come across plenty of companies that have no idea what it means to do
"best practices". Companies can be notoriously bad at very important parts of
their own business. Just look how many companies outsource accounting. They
literally don't trust themselves to handle their money properly.

And just as there are dodgy accountants, there will be dodgy SEO/Social Media
consultants. The key with good leadership in a company is being able to
identify what's what.

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brk
Completely agree. Not only is the "magic" of SEO long-gone, people are sick of
every possible avenue of the Internet being "leveraged" for marketing
purposes.

~~~
wyclif
This is yet another non-news blog post with a sensationalised headline (which,
to his credit, he admits).

Here's another problem. The author hoists himself on his own petard with this
nugget of wisdom:

 _Twitter, Facebook, even the biggest social network, MySpace, which was built
as a place to market to young people, has been destroyed by the attempts to
commandeer them by marketers._

So it's shocking, _shocking_ that marketers would "commandeer" a service that
was expressly designed to aid and abet marketers. Hm.

~~~
unalone
Facebook wasn't designed to abet marketers - not in the way that some people
do it, using their own profile to advertise their company. (Facebook Pages and
feed messages are completely fine.) Neither was MySpace originally, though
once it started happening they reversed positions pretty quickly.

~~~
ssharp
I think he means in terms of placing ads. While it's nice to think that the
founders of Facebook and MySpace really wanted to create ways for people to
connect, in reality they were creating a service with mass-adoption potential
in the most highly sought-after demographics. These audiences are golden for
marketing and in some cases, it creates deep opportunities for demographics
that were previously difficult to market to...especially teenagers.

What this guy is talking about is how companies are now trying to build lists
of friends on MySpace/Facebook/Whatever for what is essentially "free"
marketing. This is some sort of secondary marketing and probably wasn't the
intention of the services as they aren't providing any revenue. When executed
wisely, this strategy is actually really good and can actually provide value
to the service, the company as well as its "friends". However, I seriously
doubt the ability of most SEO's to adapt and succeed with quality results in
social media. It's not as cut and dry as SEO and actually requires "white hat"
creativity.

~~~
unalone
MySpace, yes. It came from a very corporate background. But Facebook really
did start as a small little network for Harvard people that spread like mad.
(I think if Zuckerberg had really been out to make a billion dollars with
Facebook, he'd have been much better prepared with an advertising solution
than he was. Considering how good the Facebook team is with innovating and
expanding themselves, advertising dropped the ball - I think because they
didn't prepare any solutions ahead of time.)

The "friends list" is exactly what I dislike about such systems. Especially on
Facebook, where systems already exist to handle such systems benevolently. I
don't think that counts as SEO, though, since there's nothing SEO to putting a
page on a private network. That opposed to Twitter, where some people link to
every single blog post they write to boost their link status. (Then again: I
don't understand Twitter and probably never will.)

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jpavlik
Gee, only the thousandth article I've read of this title. The nature of SEO
will change, obviously. Those who don't adapt will fizzle out. That's always
been true, though. SEO now isn't the same as SEO three or four years ago.

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fallentimes
No, it's not. This is linkbait crap.

Flagged.

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sabat
Black-and-white fallacy. SEO may become more difficult over time (it already
has), but this article contains no logical argument or evidence to show why
SEO would become "dead". As long as search engines are relevant, optimizing
for them will be a living skill.

Blogga please.

