SEO - Art, Science or recycled “tacky techie talk”?
Call it textbook SEO, call it recycled rubbish, call it smart talk or perhaps, bollocks.
Do you see me already? What i’ve been itching to write about is how textbook SEO is fast becoming (or already is) outdated, ineffective and a wasted effort, how we are moving into the ‘art’ aspect of SEO and making the transition to marketing.
“Textbook SEO”???
“Textbook SEO” you ask? Haven’t you read that same old set of rigid instructions spamming the whole WWW in pointer forms reading: no javascript,no flash,no frames,no redirects,Kw in h1,kw in url,kw in links,kw in alt tags,kw prominence,kw density,kw blahblahblah…
Scientific approach…
This is what many classify as the scientific approach to SEO.
- Proper use of tags; title, meta, description, h1, alt
- Keyword placement
- W3C.org compliancy
- Domain name
- URL longevity
- Site map
- Link popularity
- Link reputation
- Link text
- Link structure
- Design elements
- Robot.txt file
- LSI
- Content Freshness
On the contrary, we have all been stuck in rare situations where we get lousy ranking for even long tail kw’s and to piss us off even further, sites who aren’t even competitors rank better for the term. And this is considering you’ve ‘professionally’ SEO’d your site. Or so you thought. At the end of the day what clients want in SEO is to be ranked at the top. To be visible to the search engines. Oh, and lets not forget the marketers who say, “Oh Tom! you forgot about link Building!”
Link Building isn’t enough, fancy PR isn’t enough, Poularity does not equal Authority
What do i think about link building? I cant say it’s bollocks because it is essential. But what i can tell you is that even industry experts have tangle mangled and wrangled the concept, linking Authority with Popularity. Go on read Jon M. Kleinberg’s theory of linking and authority. So is having a brilliantly implemented link campaign the solution to sky high rankings? Absolutely not. Again, Authority does not equal to Popularity.
Art side of SEO…. and piping hot food for thought
Now lets look at the art side of SEO
- Visitor Behavior Keyword Research
- Creative Content
- Article Marketing
- Blogging
- Social Networking
- Video files
- Audio Files
- Podcasting
- Local Search
- Analyzing Data (Web analytics)
The technicalities of SEO when combined with the art elements may present us the edge at optimisation. We need content that can invoke emotions, interact and educate. Do keep in mind that search engines having a door to click-stream analysis, end user data, and understanding and searching communities and social space will easily outplay your “textbook SEO”. It seems more so that we are becoming marketers, than Search Engine Specialists, doesn’t it?
