As Long As There Are Search Engines, SEO Will Survive
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SEO isn’t a dying industry, it’s an evolving industry. I think that Greg and Shoemoney make good points, but I disagree with their overall impression of SEO’s future. Yes, the Search Engines’ algorithms are changing, but they always have – and always will. One thing you change today, may not work a week from now. Isn’t this how it has always been?
The sentence that I disagree with most comes from Greg’s post: “Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda.” Let me break down why I think this is a horrible argument:
Yes, Search Engines are very smart and they have smart people working for them too. However, they don’t have all of the smart people working for them. With every new process there is a new opportunity. You can figure out what the Search Engines find important, and optimize your site for those things. It is done through testing, testing and…testing. This is how they did it in the 90’s, this is how they did it 5 years ago, and this is how they do it today.
In many cases, I think the Search Engines encourage SEO. Many times it is beneficial to the users. Optimizing your local Children’s Hospital website so families in need are able to find the information they are looking for is a good thing. In many cases, the designers of these websites don’t know how to create a Search Engine friendly site that can easily be found. They need SEO’s to help them.
The best SEO’s create a marketing strategy that is Search Engine compliant. They build the natural relevant links through creating strong educational content that is beneficial to the users. What is so wrong with that? Not every SEO spams the Search Results.
Unless the Search Engines start ranking all of their results by hand, they will need to use an algorithm. No matter what the algorithm is, it has important factors that it is looking for on a website. You can play to any of these factors in the algorithm and get your site to rank. If it is about how many people bookmark your site, develop content and new ways to make it easier for people to find your site and bookmark it. The possibilities are endless. Every algorithm is looking for specific things on the site, and almost all of them can be manipulated.
In the end, I’d like to reiterate my previous statement: as long as Search Engines exist, SEO will exist. SEO will continue to get harder, and the tactics SEOs use will continue to change. That should come as no surprise to anyone in this industry.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
[...] As Long As There Are Search Engines, SEO Will Survive, Gonzo SEO [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
[...] As Long As There Are Search Engines, SEO Will Survive, Gonzo SEO [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Well spoken Pratt:
Take em to church! Naysayers blah!!! Opinions are like, well you know what I mean. Good to see a Sphinn go hot in 7 hours like this, good stuff as usual.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:44 am
[...] determined to point out how wrong they are. People like Ian Laurie at Conversation Marketing and Taylor Pratt from Gonzo SEO with his Gloria Gaynor-esque post about how SEO will survive. And now me. [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Good thoughts. In theory, you are correct–if SEs do not put more weight on factors outside of the website itself such as traffic, conversion, etc. This is where I think we are going.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:28 am
[...] a third response, Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search [...]
May 10th, 2008 at 9:50 am
[...] As Long As There Are Search Engines, SEO Will Survive, Gonzo SEO [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 9:23 am
[...] agreed with Calacanis explaining how they agree with him, while Michael Gray, Ian Lurie, and Taylor Pratt shrieked “Long live SEO”. As you can see Calacanis’ statement created a debate, [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 11:39 am
[...] As Long As There Are Search Engines, SEO Will Survive, Gonzo SEO [...]
May 20th, 2008 at 1:37 am
They just make a generalized statement and sounds so funny. But the problem is, that they have good fan following who buzz these things up. SEO is already an established industry and like any other industry, those who can change with time would survive - simple.
I had a fight with a SEM who said content writers do not have any future and they would die off soon - what the hell.
You may like to read that post at http://www.oddseo.com/future-of-content-writers/
And nice post Taylor.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
This article was very nicely written with a lot of interesting facts that many people do not know about SEO companies. I believe that you are right about the tactics of SEO companies constantly changing due to the increasingly busier traffic on the web. This business is booming not submerging and I liked all the information you used to back up that point. This blog is really nicely written and I look forward to reading more of your posts.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:42 am
[...] a third response, Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
And as long as SEO survive, I will survive too, and there’s always a way to make money
July 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am
[...] Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search [...]