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Back to Basics in SEO
There has been a lot of talk about Google and MSN's new algorithms and Yahoo's search engine changes. When these changes finally do occur, it is always important to remember the number one rule in SEO: DON'T PANIC! If there is one guaranteed...
Finding the Right SEO Company
I often talk to people who have lost faith in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms because of bad experiences. Either they saw no results, felt that they were tricked into subscribing to a service that could not work, or that they wasted money...
SEO For Ecommerce
Ranking well under the free listings in the major search engines basically mean one thing – Lots of free, recurring, and targeted traffic. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN can be very powerful weapons in your internet marketing, if...
The Benefits of Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you're going to sell any type of product or service online, you're eventually going to have to optimize your Web site for the Search Engines, in order to boost traffic and sales.
Many years ago, it was quite easy to draw effective traffic,...
Web Promotion - SEO Strategy
What's it like to work for a world class SEO? What secrets could
you glean on website promotion? The SEO business is sexy,
exciting and challenging. While most people want to improve and
promote their site, web promo companies often deal with...
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Search Engine Updates vs. SEO
Webmasters always anxiously wait for a search engine update. Those who rank well want to see their sites get even better. Those who didn't do well expect a major boost. Those whose sites get de-indexed anticipate a major comeback. Those who just started new sites bet on their sites will make into the first page of search engine result pages (SERPs) for their targeting keywords. Of course, not everyone will be happy about the results of search engine updates. After all, search engine traffic is a zero-sum game - someone loses and someone gains. Then, the webmasters start preparing for next update.
The Business Reasons Behind The Major Updates
All major search engines claim that they strive to present search results to users with the highest quality. But the business of search engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many business reasons for every major search engine updates. Search engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion rate since the searchers are very close to make their buying decisions. The downside of the search traffic for webmasters is that they don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today, but nowhere next day.
Search engine companies will, no doubt, use the search engine traffic to maximize the values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update (allegra update or Superbowl update) once again shocked the webmaster community like last Florida update. The noticeable change in Superbowl update is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords that aren't even highly relevant to their pages. You may think the move is to fight spams and improve the quality of SERPs. That's only part of the story. The results of the update is that the websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press releases) will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations.
If we think search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try it free before you buy. This time, Google decides
to lure the major corporations to test the benefits of search traffic. Major corporations will likely increase their spending in online advertising and those news agencies may even drop their law sues against Google if they see the traffic from Google justifies that their sites benefit from including in Google index database.
Is this the real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you own Google, however, you will do the exactly the same.
Will this negatively impact the user experience? - maybe and maybe not. What is the real difference between the #1 spot and the site that ranks #100? - the backlinks. Backlinks don't alter the quality of a page at all.
When they say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are always driven by business needs. It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad".
Strategies to Cope with search Engine Updates
The Internet and the Web was once hailed as the new medium and the new opportunity for small business and site owners. They will be disappointed as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep packets. There're strategies they can use to cope with the search engine updates, however.
1. Create a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some of your sites get hammered in a update the rest may benefit from the update. 2. Generate traffic from all major search engines. 3. Use the search traffic to build loyal user bases. 4. Build sites similar to the sites of well-established companies. The tags, on-page, off page optimization techniques will become less and less important as major corporations aren't interested in those types of things that geek webmasters are interested.
About the Author
Bruce Zhang operates a website http://www.4th-media.com that automatically aggregates and categorizes SEO news, new articles, and forum threads from over 50 sources daily ( http://www.4th-media.com/newsbot/ ) to help webmasters and SEO professionals to keep up with the latest development in search engine marketing. The website also offers original thoughts on SEO.
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