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While search engine technology and information retrieval (IR) predates the web (as in the mid-1990′s), we often refer to the optimizers of the web as starting their craft (early SEO’s) about – give or take, 1995.
NOTICE: Is this picture really a lake? (It’s an illusion!) *See below for the real answer.
These webmasters (myself included) figured out a way to develop websites that showcased products, services and general information and brochureware online — while including tags, code and text that seemed to elevate their listings when searched.
These sites were often not pretty, but some have also been, and still are very big money makers – and haven’t changed much since then.
But, even though spammers (not me!) started to include keyword stuffing and many black hat SEO tactics, it became a very feasible, challenging and rewarding exercise for any webmaster and business owner to do it themselves. A new branch of software and web development was born: search engine optimization. It’s not necessarily a great term, but it stuck. (Note: Remember, you are not optimizing the search engines – you don’t own them – but you ARE optimizing websites, which you do have control over)
Why is SEO still a big deal – even though PPC gets the ‘most bucks’?
SEO efforts yields (page one results) the most worthy of clicks, the highest of trust – and the most frequent.
Imagine you are looking for information about ‘acne treaments’. Ask yourself this: Which position or result in the search engines are you going to trust the most? Forget the hard facts, and multiple, year long studies about this. It’s common sense, as you know and interact the web. The paid advertisements – like Google Adwords can be brought up in minutes, and mirrors a paid commercial, of sorts. SEO takes time, and search engines, specially Google – looks at trust and authority as big indicators for top positioning. The “T & A of internet” is not an easy or fast accessible target.
It can take months and years for the most competitive of keywords. (ie: web hosting, credit cards, viagra, weight loss, etc)
However, SEO is not an illusion or a waste. If you look at the top 10 listings across any major category within the top three top mega-niches:
…you’ll quickly notice by a visual scan of the first page of search results that they have been optimized by these webmasters – some with years of experience, others with less (and sometimes very obviously so).
Take the ‘acne treatment’ keyword example. Type it into Google. Then, just look over the TITLE tags in the top results (blue link) and you’ll see that they all have the keyword included, and some early, and others early + repeated. They may include action/benefit statements as well (not just keywords!).
Now, use that keyword again, but place ” (quotes) before and after that keyword, and you’ll notice that 9 of them (at the time of search) has the keyword included in the TITLE. (Tip: using the allintitle: command will reveal the sites that have (very likely) SEOs working on them, and could be important for you to study and learn from).
Sure, as the search engines evolved from the V1.0 model to the V2.0 (Google & Links/PageRank, 1998) and into current time (Universal, Social, Local, News, Images and more) – we have learned and still see that SEOs are winning major ranking, traffic and visibility wars.
Why do you think they are doing this? It works – and it will continue to work – and also with new social signals and expanding people networks (Facebook, for example).
Are you winning in the SEO world?
What do you think about SEO? Is it working for you? What marketing opportunities or online channels are you using today? And, what are you testing for tomorrow? (ie. mobile)
Let’s rock! Begin today! Optimize (w/keywords) your TITLE tags at least!
Here’s the view of the illusion:
Jon Rognerud is the #1 online marketing expert for Entrepreneurs. His best-selling SEO book, "The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization" from Entrepreneur Press/McGraw-Hill is in bookstores now. Act fast, and get a free gift here. Connect with Jon on Google+
Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments
Thanks Jon for the post. Long time reader and certainly among one of your students. I have a question though, what about anchor texts.
To me it seems that Google looks at anchor texts up to a certain percentage of links and when it gets too much, starts discounting them and in some cases having even negative impact. What do you think of that?
And also I wanted to know how can I avoid being penalized by Google based on keywords. Short tail, long tail, exact match, broad match, phrase match, no match?
Thanks for taking the time and responding to this.
Heya, Al – great to hear from you.
Research and results show that a “one-sided” and “too-much-of-one-thing” can effect your SEO – in other words “not natural”.
You can do things to trigger, or set off flags – that may change patterns to your site or page. However, if you follow a natural model, and nothing you do, or have done is “tailored perfectly”, or “too custom”, you’ll be fine.
Imagine this though: if you have a brand new site (days old), and, within a few short weeks build 10,000 new links, and they all say “viagra” or “buy viagra here” in the anchor text, that’s obviously not natural.
If you have a specific case, email it to me, and I’ll do a link analysis for you. You might be overthinking this, but I cannot see it fully, sorry.
And, are you only tracking your rankings for these keywords, or are you seeing traffic tankings exclulsively? (your web analytics)?
Cheers, Jon