Where Is Search Engine Optimization Heading

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 7 of July , 2008 at 7:17 pm

Search engine optimization is probably about 15 years old depending on who you talk too. It is certainly more than ten years old if you consider the professional side of the business.

In the beginning it was simple task of ‘keyword stuffing’ pages. Getting to the top of search results was fairly easy for two reasons; first there was simply the lack of competition; second was the straightforward process of on page optimization - keyword stuffing essentially. Search engine optimization was quick and dirty.

We have come along way since then. Google has driven the business to a large extent and their method of ranking sites based on ‘authority’ has been replicated by other search engines. With the advent of link exchanges, link farms and purchased links, this method of ranking site is becoming less reliable. Given the amount of competition and the serious search engine optimization work for high ranking places, there is going to be a need for change at some time in the future.

Users, that is, the people undertaking searches will eventually be the driving force. The question that we, as search engine optimization specialist need to ask is, ‘how will search engines provide relevant search results into the future’?

Google is already playing with at least one concept - the page load times, when it comes to advertisers. I believe they may well be tweaking search results based on the actions of those that undertake a search. If a lot of searches hit the back button after clicking on a search result, this may well indicate a lack of relevance for that term and see the rankings for that site and term reduced. Search engine optimization will need to ensure that pages and keywords do have a high relevance to users.

Page load times have always been an issue. Whether that data can be used to rank a site is unclear - particularly when there are so many other variables at stake such as server issues.

Finding a ranking system that is fair will never happen. I have yet to see any system that can reliably measure traffic. Even Google’s own analytic program misses a lot of traffic. At present we are stuck with a mix of on and off page search engine optimization strategies that pays little regard to user habits.

The real future of search engine optimization will be in trying to determine how the search engines will use visitor statistics to determine a sites relevance in the bigger picture. With the internet growing so quickly each day, the opportunities for getting high rankings is becoming more difficult. The future is going to be interesting.

Category: SEO

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