seo is as dead as a zombie!
DESCRIPTION
SEO is dead?!? It's as dead as a Zombie.TRANSCRIPT
• SEO since 2007
• Agency & In-house
• Founded miratrix end of 2012
• SEO, Content & Mobile App Marketing
POLL
• Google launched and took control; of the search industry in 99/00
• Google noticed that something was messing with their SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages)
• We didn’t have a name yet
• It was 2 years before Google made an update
• Updates at this time were limited to refnement with the overall algorithm
• Florida did have underlying change to landscape: topic specifc PageRank Vs simple PageRank
• Other updates delivered to detect changes in onsite aspects (cloaking, stuffng etc)
• SEO’s (we’ve got a name now) didn’t flinch
• AdWords launched Oct 23rd 2000
• Believed to be The First SEO Killer – Actually Strengthened the SEO industry
– Help to quickly show the revenue beneft to ranking in search engines
• Search became the future...
• Updates pushed through the year
• The updates were additional features for the user experience
• In all failed to impact the quality of results
• Google wasn't winning
• Overall SERP quality was OK little effort was placed into combatting link graph spam
• Spam outing started
– Occasional validation of sites being penalized e.g. BMW
• Lots of links
– Internal link spam effectiveness was high
– Link volume as effective as domain diversity
• Keyword cram
• Lots of pages with thin content
• Underlying technical foundation
• 'Vincent' update favored big brands to independents
• This didn't do much to impact SEO's tactics
• SERPs adjustment to include new pieces of information
• 'Mayday' impacted long-tailed terms
• Sites with thin content took a beating
• Link equity still lead to dominance with SE focused content– User content not important
• A sign of things to come
• Up to this point SEO's tac-tics were
• More links
• More content - Auto generated (spun) content was at it's peak
POLL
• Panda targeted sites with thin content and high ads to content ratios
• Huge changes in the SERP’s
• Websites wiped from the listings
• Penguin, with more panda
• Penguin targeted
–Over optimized anchor texts
– Low quality links
POLL
• Smart SEO's shifted tac-tics
• Focus on user experience
• Remove thin content
• Introduce quality content
• Decrease page load times
• Reduce server errors
• Links
– Toxic links removed
– Tighter quality control on link acquisition
– Shift to a ‘natural outreach’ based on quality content (inbound marketing)
– Caution:
• 95% of content marketing to gather links does not lead to positional improvements
POLL
• Introduce social signals
– still minimal but as Google pushes on with Google+ this will grow and grow
– diffculties in analyzing other social networks continues (falls out with Twitter - crashing it if they don't use APi and FB/Google enmity continues)
• Interflora hit with manual penalty removed from listings for 11days
• Focusing on paid advertorials from Johnston press
• Warning to others before the next update
• Another Penguin update targeting certain types of advertorials and paid articles
• Panda continues to roll out in the background
• Google attempts to put the nail in SEO's coffn
– Removing natural keyword data from analytics packages
– Citing user security (due to PRISM) as the reason
• SEO's didn't have analytics in the beginning
– Quality SEO's don't need keyword data to acquire qualifed traffc
• Google will continue to develop it's understanding of social signals
• Quality of links will become more important
• Authorship and content origin will become a factor
• Google will begin to identify churn content better
• Original content will become increasingly important and diffcult to achieve