One of our members brought this article to my attention – and it mentions that Personalized Search will kill off SEO.
Every year or two there is something new that comes out that predicts the “Death of SEO” and yet SEO keeps plugging away. I don’t know the author of the article, but let’s break this down …
They list five things that will not matter in SEM in the future and five things that will matter.
THE FIVE THINGS THAT WILL NOT MATTER:
1. Meta Tags – Okay, if this article was written in 2000, I would give it some merit. Please, someone tell me when in the last seven years that meta tags have mattered? And don’t include the Title as a meta tag – it isn’t classified as such. I first wrote about the demise of meta tags back in June of 2000 – nearly seven years ago, and it is still true today. This one is worthless.
2. Page Size - The author discusses that since most are on high speed connections that page size will no longer be an issue. I disagree. It will always be an issue. People don’t want to wait any longer … when the web first started getting popular, there was patience as it was new. Now, no longer. In the testing labs that we have conducted, the majority of the participants clicked off a site if it did not immediately popup. They want the information immediately … with no wait. And remember, the page size is not everything about the speed of display, it has to do with your server and how many other domains are stacked on it and the IP you are using.
TIP: Get your own dedicated server so you are in control of the speed on the server … so you don’t end up in a clog with virtual hosting.
JavaScript Code - The author states that externalizing JavaScript will not hide the code from search engines as they are getting smarter and it is just a matter of time before they start indexing external code, so it doesn’t make sense to do this anymore.
Um, okay, newsflash. External JavaScript has been opened by certain bots starting about 4.5 months ago according to our logs, but you can’t find any of the specific text in searches. So, what is being done with the information? You can only speculate at this time.
Also, when an SEO takes JavaScript and sends it to an external file, it isn’t mainly for SEO purposes. It allows for the page size to be smaller, for the JS to be cached and improves load time, and saves bandwidth on the server. If you have a million page views a day, and the JavaScript code is 2kb in size, if it has to load each time on each page view, that is a lot of bandwidth that you are paying for that is repetitive. It is just good manners and good webmastering to do so.
4. Location of Content - It is said that search engines are getting smarter and the location of where the content is won’t matter. This is pure speculation and I don’t see how the location “won’t matter” but again, the author is discussing on-page factoring, which is very limiting in the SEO world right now.
5. Search Engine Ranking - The author states that with personalized search getting more popular, that the days of “ranking software” will be numbered. They state that the numbers of traffic are useless with conversions being attached.
Now, I agree completely with the last statement. I have always said, dating back to the 90s, that rankings don’t matter – conversions do. However, personalized search is one more vehicle to use and if you understand it, you can ensure that your pages get in front of the prospect you are targeting. It is just another way for the SEO to adapt to an every changing landscape.
SEOs know this.
THE FIVE THINGS THAT WILL MATTER:
1. Website Messaging - Sounds like the “tell a friend” script that has been revamped. Numbers are strong that Web 2.0 traffic, tell a friend traffic, etc. are great at increasing numbers to websites but are horrible with conversions. Until that is corrected, this stuff makes me yawn.
2. Competitive Landscape - Just stating that competitive intelligence will be vital in the future. Well, it is right now, it was in the past, and has been every day since Grog offered his services to compete with Mog in the caveman days.
3. Rich Media - Yes, the different ways of getting content to the visitor is getting more dynamic and specialized, especially with AJAX coming of age. Guess what? It doesn’t matter how great the technology gets. Business gets done the old fashioned way. Relationships. Great Service. Continued Follow-up. It doesn’t matter how many podcasts you do. If you don’t have a great relationship with your customers or key figures in your industry, your business will never hit its peak. In my opinion, a personalized email beats an autoresponder, a phone call beats an email, and a face-to-face meeting beats a phone call. Every time.
4. Usability - This has always been true since the web began. A/B testing has been in place for a long time as well.
5. More Widgets. Yawn.
Here is the main issue. The SERPs screen will continue to shrink the organic listings and PPC will start to take over and will be the main driving force for sites to gain traffic. Search engines will track clicks on the SERPs, not to figure out which sites are most popular, but to figure out why a user clicked on that organic listing when they were served seven choices in the paid area.
The focus will be revenue generation all the way around. We have seen the evolution start, and it will continue. The days of the lazy webmaster are in the past. It is the ones that spends half their time analyzing their competition and the other half figuring out how to do it better that will win in this new marketplace that is forming right in front of us.
Rock on.
The main reason I started the SEO Revolution was out of frustration. Frustration at all of the lies and misconceptions that are posted in forums, given as advice in teleconferences, and even taught in live workshops. "So why didn't all of this work?" " Why wasn't my site successful?" " Why am I still stuck in a rut?" 