Has SEO Been Dying Over All These Years?

So, what had SEO actually been doing for us in all these years? I believe it was there to optimize a web site, and making it attractive to search engines. The focus was, and is still is, on helping a web site rank impressively on Google, Yahoo, Bing and many other major and local search engines. For years, SEO was kept as a secret, as it is some sort of black magic; then, we also heard about terms like, ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’; we’ve been told that white hats are the angels and the black hats are the demons; and, we believed it.

After great quality content, the focus shifted to include specific keywords, meta-descriptions, title tags, article directories, blog submissions and doing everything what could help a web site get the attention of Google. However, Google, in the recent few years, have taken a complete U turn in how it values a site when users search something through its search-engine. Panda and Penguins shocked the world of webmasters; many cried, many shouted; and slowly many started doubting the tactics they’ve been using for so far. And, many soon started blogging and talking about the gradual death of SEO.

Now, should we believe that this one-time-king has died a silent death because Google showed too much concern for its users? Well, I, at least, do not think so. SEO is very much Alive and doing great! SEO services were essential; they are essential; and, they’ll always be essential.

Although recent updated by Google came out as kind-of-shocks for any SEO company, a large number of web sites soon restored their rankings. Google is primarily making these updates to hunt the spam, and doesn’t have anything personal against SEO services.

Here is a statement that appears in Google’s current quality guidelines, and has been there since the first time they were published: “Make pages [primarily] for users, not for search engines.” Primarily was added in June of 2008, and Matt Cutts (head of Google’s webspam team) had this to say about it: “the spirit of that guideline is that users should be the primary consideration. But it is fine to do some things that don’t affect users but do help search engines.” So, the crux of the message is that a web site should be designed and the content should be written for the ultimate users, and not for the search-engines. Just keep this in mind and your web site is always on track, and a favourite of Google and hundreds of other search-engines.