With the latest round of rules and regulations launched by Google, the biggest question in everybody’s mind is – Is there anything like SEO still existent? Well the truth of the matter is that the answer to this question is a big Yes.
Let us take a hard look and the answer and try to understand the same.
The basic logic of SEO is two-fold- Optimization and Revenue Generation. Each of these activities are different from each other and yet intricately linked to each other. Optimization of a website analyzes a website on the below parameters.
- How well is the website designed?
- Is the website designed as per the each and every guideline?
- Are the keywords used and distributed properly ?
- Does the website description in the coding have the keywords?
Only when a website clears each of the above parameter successfully, can it say that it has been optimized. Now when it comes to the second part i.e. Revenue Generation, this is where the latest rules issued by Google has made people question the relevance of SEO.
When it comes to revenue generation, there are number of different things used by SEO companies and Managers.
The first is link building using Article Posting websites, Blogs, Social Bookmarking and Guest Posts.
The second is creating profiles on popular social media websites like Twitter and Facebook and then advertising the links of these platforms.
Now when it comes to the first activity, Google realized that a number of websites indulged in Spamming. They also realized that these websites did not check the quality of the articles and blogs submitted. Hence initially they reduced the page rank of such websites. However, when SEO companies continued to use them, they then took the extreme step of reducing the impact of such practices.
As a result, in today environment, Social Bookmarking is the only activity that seems reliable and which can give you some guarantee of inbound links.
However, most SEO managers forget that social media platforms can also be extremely important links. They have the reach that is similar if not higher than article and blog posting websites. However, the biggest factor that keeps them high on the list is that 99% of the advertising on these platforms is paid advertising.
Google attaches a huge positive to paid advertising. The reasoning behind it is that if any person is ready to pay to advertise their company, they will ensure that the content on their website and the advertisement is good enough to attract visitors.
So as you can see, SEO is not dead, but has just evolved.