Search Engine Optimization is still the best and perhaps least expensive way to drive targeted traffic to your website. That’s not going to change for the foreseeable future.

What has changed in the past, and will continue to change this year and next, are Google’s algorithms for determining where you rank for any given keyword.

The best SEO experts continuously test Google’s algorithms by trying different tactics to see what happens. In a perfect world, Lord Google would bestow upon its worthy subjects the exact formulas used for ranking.

Since that’s not going to happen, the best we can do is squeeze what we can out of Google folks like Matt Cutts, while testing the heck out of Google’s algorithms.

I’ll leave the actual testing to people with more time on their hands. In the mean time, I’ll read their studies and simultaneously try to read between the lines.

Here’s what I think…

A Brief History

Way back in the dark ages of the search engines and HTML web pages, they created HTML “Header Tags” that told the search engines what the page was about, and which keyword terms to use for ranking the page.

Internet marketers discovered this “secret formula” and promptly stuffed pages with their keywords. It worked for a time, but because it was highly abused and overused, the keyword tag is pretty much ignored today.

Then, internet marketers discovered another search engine secret: you could get a higher ranking if you had a lot of links to your site. Thus was born the “Link Exchange” era, during which “Link Farms” and entire link exchange services were created. A few folks became rich.

Most people, however, found themselves back at ground zero when Google changed their algorithms yet again.

Today, we’re in the “Quality Links” era of Search Engine Optimization.

And, once again, we find internet marketers basically scamming the system by creating intricate linking networks. The idea is that I’ll write an article, “spin” it into a dozen or more unique variations (using special tools developed by internet marketers), and send these “unique” articles out to a vast network of “related” blogs.

By embedding links back to my website in these “spun” articles, I instantly create hundreds of keyword-rich links back to my site from “related” blogs, thus raising the eyebrows of Google and the other search engines (there still are other search engines, aren’t there?).

Lo and behold, this link-building strategy works – and it works extremely well.

But it gets better. The clever internet entrepreneurs create even more elaborate linking systems by using public blogging and social media sites. For example, I might create a Squidoo page that links to MY website, while I have my hundred or so “spun” articles pointing to the Squidoo page. Thus, I create nifty “three-way” links.

This technique increases the importance of my Squidoo page, which in turn increases the value of the links back to my website. This gets around the problem of having a bunch of links from so-so blogs that aren’t important in Google’s bright eyes, all just going to my website.

Clever, eh?

Oh, and it gets even more involved and elaborate. But the bottom line is that this entire strategy depends on Google placing a high importance on links, giving more weight to links from “high-value” sites.

Regardless of the SEO strategy you employ, you should mostly pay attention to …

What Google Really Cares About

Anyone who has followed SEO for any length of time knows that what Google is really after is value to the searcher.

When I do a Google search (or Bing – yeah, they’re still around), will I get results that answer my question, solve my problem, or give me that special search engine rush that comes from finding exactly what I’m searching for?

That’s what Google really wants – the perfect search result. They know (and have proven by their dominance) that search users don’t care about bells, whistles, or floaty things in the sidebar.

Search users simply want the perfect search results for their query.

But Google also understands how fickle we are. We want it, and we want it NOW.

If some other search engine comes along and is able to deliver more accurate (in the eyes of the searcher) results, even the most diehard Google user will quickly jump ship …

And with a loss of searchers comes a huge loss in revenue. Am I right, Yahoo?

All of this leads me to ponder …

Will Linking Strategies Become the Dinosaurs of SEO

It’s got to happen. Google engineers know that their algorithms are being scammed by internet marketers. They’re privy to the half dozen membership sites that were created exclusively to create massive amounts of two and three way links to their member’s “money sites.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against using these tools. I use them myself, and they are very handy.

But what happens when (not if) linking becomes less important? What will all these sites do when their massive linking strategies no longer work?

I question these linking strategies because, in my experience, the majority of the articles posted through these networks contain very little substance, are poorly written, and offer little if any value to the reader.

They are created solely for the purpose of increasing the search engine ranking of the marketer’s primary website or websites – the sites on which or through which they sell their products or affiliate products.

So … What’s Next?

I can only guess at how the Google engineers will approach this challenge. I don’t expect linking strategies to go away entirely. There’s definitely some value that should be attributed to one site linking to another.

But something has to be done to determine the actual “value” of a site to the end users – something that isn’t so dependent on links. Otherwise, all we’ll see at the top of the search engines will be these affiliate marketer websites that offer highly-biased reviews …

My best estimate is that Social Networks and Social Media will play a greater role in ranking, along with more intelligent spiders that can decipher the relative value of a web page and website.

The first step will likely be to more tightly integrate Social Networking and Social Media into the equation. Then, (some day), we’ll see search spiders with artificial intelligence – spiders capable of determining the true value of the website to the searcher.

In the Social Networking and Social Media realm, look for the following:

• Greater emphasis placed on social networking “votes”, “Diggs”, comments and other mentions …
• More emphasis placed on the number and quality of comments placed on blog pages, video pages, and other sites that allow commenting …
• A higher level of importance assigned to mentions and references on social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn …
• And eventually a tighter integration with mobile devices, where the search engines track what the mobile devices are reading, viewing, watching, or listening to online.

SEO is a crazy, mixed up world that will only get crazier.

My suggestion is to do what’s working now, but simultaneously start to build for the future.

Don’t put all your eggs in the link building basket. Instead, keep building those links while simultaneously increasing your exposure to social networking, social media sites, and mobile devices.

That way, you’re set for now and the future.

Interested in some assistance with your SEO strategy and optimizing your website? Let me know … I’d be happy to give you a free analysis.

The Tool of The Future?

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