Is SEO A Dead Web Marketing Strategy?

A few days ago Google announced its commencement of a worldwide personalized search result plan. Since this announcement a lot of flurry has been going on among internet marketing folks. As usual there are varied opinions as to the state of search engine optimization (seo) in relation to this idea of personalizing search results. While search optimization experts, most of whom depend on that as their main source of making money on the net, are of the opinion that seo will still be relevant as long as marketing on the net is concerned. Others are of the opinion that personalized search results is the end of seo.

Which way should you go? Continue to use seo in marketing your small business on the net or look for another alternative?

Before you answer that question I think it’s important first to understand what personalized search results really is and of course what search engine optimization is.

Personalized search results ssentially means that google search results will now be based on your individual history of search result usage rather than the relevance of websites to your search query. As Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com puts it,

“By watching what you click on in search results, Google can learn that you favor particular sites. For example, if you often search and click on links from Amazon that appear in Google?s results, over time, Google learns that you really like Amazon. In reaction, it gives Amazon a ranking boost. That means you start seeing more Amazon listings, perhaps for searches where Amazon wasn?t showing up before.

The results are custom tailored for each individual. For example, let’s say someone else prefers Barnes & Nobles. Over time, Google learns that person likes Barnes & Noble. They begin to see even more Barnes & Nobles listings, rather than Amazon ones”

From this, it means when two persons with different preferences search for the same items on google.com the search results presented to the two will be different. I think that is really disappointing if you’ve been head over heels on focusing on the search engines for your traffic.

But all the same the question still stands, in the face of this should you continue to focus on seo for your online home business marketing?

The truth is I’ll not be able to answer that question categorically with a “yes” or a “no”. But having done some indepth reading on this subject from some authoritative websites, I can point to you that seo is still very relevant today – google changes or not! You only need to understand the game, know what to do and then do it right and you’ll still have some good results with search engine optimization strategies.

The success strategies of seo are still the same today as they have been some years ago. It’s those who wants to force these strategies into something else that will always have problems whenever changes like this takes place. As I wrote in this blog sometime last year,

“Many online businesses are most concerned with optimizing their web pages for the search engines. But the irony is that search engines don’t want “optimized pages”. They want good pages that visitors will like. They want to return good content when anyone uses them. So creating good pages should take more of your time than searching for search engine tricks.

Creating good content and using the right keywords will help the search engines to find you and rank you.”

Read, “Web Traffic Com: What Do You Need, A Bag of Tricks Or .. ?” for more details on that post.

Still on this topic of seo I also mentioned in another post that,

“A well thought out plan and a commitment to implement that plan will help any one to stay up in the battle of search engine optimization.”

And went on to offer the following two important points about seo:

1. Search engines have different ways of ranking the exact same page. No matter what you do about your page, two search engines will not rank it the same!

2. All the search engines don’t want you to know the ways they use in ranking your page. This is one of the biggest reasons you mustn’t depend on some tricks for traffic generation. Combine this with the fact that the search engines are constantly changing the way they rank pages you’ll see how difficult it is to keep up with the tricks.

Read more of this post by clicking here.

So if you’re wondering what will happen to your small business marketing plan using seo strategies, rest assured that if you’re doing the right thing your search engine optimization will still work for you.

For further reading on this topic check out the following blogs:

Is SEO Dead? 1997 Prediction, Meet 2009 Reality

The SEO guide to Google personalized search

The Art of Personalized Search Optimization