In the early 1840s, a very wise
person coined the phrase “never talk about religion or politics.” Opinions
regarding these two things are arguably the most deeply held beliefs among most
Americans. We either agree, or we don’t. Vehemently. In either case, it’s
best-in polite company-not to discuss these topics and potentially incite a
row. We say, add to this list of taboos the topic of search engine
optimization. SEO professionals have widely varying opinions as to what’s best
when it comes to getting a website seen, and everyone believes his or her
method is the best, without question. Well, we’re ogres and we've never been
too keen on obeying the rules, walking on eggshells or candy-coating the truth.
As such, we’re going to lay a little SEO knowledge out there for you. Pick up
what you can use.
In the
early days of the Web, back in the 90s, search engines cataloged websites.
Their “spiders” would then download the page and crawl the content looking for
links and topics. In August of 1997, John Audette of Multimedia Marketing Group
documented the phrase “search engine optimization.”
I searched teacup poodle; why am I
seeing results for oolong and earl grey?
Initially,
the search engines’ algorithms relied on webmasters to provide information
letting the engine know the content of the site via keyword meta tags and index
files. It didn’t take long for programmers to start looking for ways to game
the system, coming up higher in end-users’ search results. Eventually, a simple
Web search would return links to sites that had nothing to do with the actual
query. Webmasters were stuffing meta tags with anything they could remotely
associate with the product or information actually being displayed.
An old internet marketing joke goes (something) like this:
A SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, pub, Irish pub, tavern, watering hole, beer, wine, whiskey, whisky, shot, shotgun, rifle, pistol, bandolero, tequila… You get the idea.
Search
engines adapted. Traditional methods of utilizing keyword density, inbound
links and link farming used to get businesses a spot on page one of Google.
Now, those practices may get your site flagged for spamming.
Wait, so SEO is dead?
We didn't say that. There are still lots and lots
of companies out there willing to sell you a $500+/month SEO package of
blogging, link building and general Internet voodoo. Some of the old practices
are still very valid in modern marketing. More important, however, are things
like quality/original content, frequent updates, social sharing and well written code utilizing embedded keywords, heading tags and alt image tags.
The old
SEO methods of telling people you had something (keyword stuffing) and then not
delivering on content are dead. Search engines are getting better at showing us
what we’re truly looking for. Thank you, search engines.
Sound off!
