SEO In An Ever Changing Environment

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 20 of August , 2008 at 10:35 am

Search engine optimization is not a static field. There are no rules and regulations and the major search engines will not tell you how to optimize your sites. In fact the search engines change their ranking methods at will and leave us all trying to guess how to interpret the changes.

The one area where search engines seem to be going is in personalization and being able to not only read content, but understand it as well. These two issues may have a long term effect on search engine optimization strategies.

What is likely to happen in the future is that a search engine will look at the behavior of a searcher and return results based on that behavior. That is the ‘personalization’ of web search. The long term reality is that we cannot optimize a site for each individual human being.

The second aspect is a search engines ability to actually understand content. Keywords will have a lower value in rankings; it will be the content as a whole that is considered when matching a search query.

Loose headings and content that is not terribly specific will rank quite lowly, no matter how keyword rich or link heavy the page is. Quality content that is quite specific from title down to content and links to other relevant pages will rate highly, irrespective of keyword strength or link numbers.

For search engines like Google, this is their ultimate goal - being able to return results that are relevant to the search phrase and that solves the searchers query.

What will be hard for many sites is the creation of content that is specific from the heading down the content including any links. One of the areas that search engines will focus on for relevant quality is the other social sites.

Search engine optimization will then need to concentrate on content, ensuring it is tight, specific and can solve a problem or provide relevant information. We need to understand what is happening today and tomorrow and be prepared to make adjustment quickly.

                      Category: SEO                      

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