Comments on: Where Is SEO Going?

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 07:47:43 +0000

It’s true you can get stuck focusing on search engines, but I think it’s ok to consider both people and algorithms as long as you always give priority to people. While I don’t acitvely optimize the words on these pages I do still often have a few keywords in mind while writing and try to get a few in there when it’s appropriate. It will affect my choice in words sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve ever let it interfere with the readability of the posts. And if I ever thought it did I would always opt for making it readable over optimized.

By: Yuri

Yuri — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 03:47:37 +0000

There’s a slight difference between working on the site as if the search engines don’t exist and for both users and the search engines.

If you think of marketing your site as if the search engines don’t exist, you are capable of finding new ways that will drive target audience to your site.

If you remember the search engines, you can get stuck in the ‘website focus’ mode and still think about the search engine optimization effect your every action can make. This is a distraction from real marketing, IMHO.

Then again, you can always remember the search engines when developing site back-end and structure, but you’d still need to think about the humans first.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 14:30:50 +0000

Good point Chris. I think we all need to develop sites for people first and search engines second. It can be funny how when you think less about search engines you start to gain more visibility in them

It’s why I wonder if all the terms used to desscribe search optimization and marketing wouldn’t be better being combined somehow. SEO would literally be optimizing for a search engine and yet so much of the work goes beyond this definition. Especially if we’re doing things first as though search engines didin’t exist.

I tend to think of SEO more as general internet marketing that keeps search engines in mind as it goes. As an SEo I would be happy to build targeted traffic to a client’s site that led to sales, even if much of that traffic never arrived through a search engine.

By: Chris Sandberg

Chris Sandberg — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 09:26:07 +0000

Site usability can be a big part of SEO. If your site is desinged well people will like it and are more likely to link to it which in turn will boost your rankings. I believe the most effective SEOs see SEO in a more holistic light which overlaps with other marketing aspects. I believe the best overall SEO stragety to use is to build a site and think of how you would market it if search engines didn’t exist, then take what you know about SEO and tweak your marketing plan a little to leverage that knowledge. It is always important to keep in mind that you are building your site for users not search engines.