The moment there is an update in the search engine algorithms, the pessimists in the SEO industry (and the ones who do not understand the true meaning of SEO) do not miss an opportunity to declare SEO as dead. The last few algorithmic updates have raised the same kind of false alarm by some from the SEO industry.
Before I start to write why SEO is more important and more needed than ever before – Let me assertively affirm that SEO is very much alive and in fact gained more life energies and SEO will remain alive as long as people use search engines to search for quality information for the quest of knowledge.
Google lately has been penalizing sites which have low-quality content, spammy and bought links or have used other methods which go against their norms and hamper the display of quality search results. This has affected the rankings of many sites and the blogosphere is full of posts on how they have been affected especially by the Google Panda Update.
This has been taken negatively by some and people have come to the conclusion that SEO is no longer going to work. But I am of the opinion that if the shift in the rankings is causing such a stir in everyone’s mind, then it only proves that organic search has got a very important place in the whole online marketing scenario. In order to rank in the organic search your site needs to be optimized. Hence SEO is very much needed.
The following study conducted in Jan. 2011 proves that yet people give more importance to organic search:
Google has raised the quality standards for SERPs – hence only sites which did not meet their quality ranking factors were affected; the rest remain unaffected or were marginally affected for some keywords.
When Google started integrating social results with search, as people are sharing an interaction platform via micro blogging on Twitter and Facebook , again the death of SEO was predicted and announced by some who also predicted that social media is replacing search but again to just go in vain.
The search is getting supplemented by social and not getting replaced by search. As social media and all the user generated content is adding the opinions and voice to the topics which are being searched.
Hence it can be said that your optimized site says what you want to say about yourself and company but social media is what the people say about you. When both the versions are in sync, the credibility is established.
The search engines continuously work on the quality of search results – hence the weight given to ranking factors keeps changing.
SEO means adapting your site to the norms and ranking factors of the search engines in order to be found in the search engines. Hence SEO is all the more in demand.
SEO is not dead but yes, it is getting more challenging and has started to gain its true place on the online marketing scenario. SEO is not dead but it has matured, evolved and now demands a quality web presence along with a quality content-rich website.
