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June 12, 2008

Is Onsite SEO Dying Down?

Marketing Pilgrim recently published a prophecy that onsite SEO is going to die. The writer says that "[a]s the search engines acquire more revenue, their pool of professionals is also drained with best brains" and that new technologies like OCR will eliminate the need to optimize for search engines.

Search Engine Journal posted its own rebuttal that onsite SEO is not going to die. In particular, the respondent says that even if there is OCR technology that can discern text within images and the like, "there’s still got to be content, regardless of development language, for the engines to read, thus, optimizing it in some way will always, always, always be needed."

The Sphinn discussion is in agreement with Search Engine Journal: on-site SEO is here to stay. Small basic changes, for example, can make or break your website in the rankings. Others say that the best SEO happens on the page, not off the page.

And others, like Jill Whalen, think that this is an issue that is beating at a dead horse. The "SEO is dead" argument is not going away.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.



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posted Tamar Weinberg in Search Engine Optimization at June 12, 2008 9:04 AM Comments (9)

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Comments

I actually think that on-site is gaining in importance as more people jump on the backlink bandwagon. What will separate two sites with growing backlinks? Original and constantly updating on-site updates.

 

Posted by No Name at June 12, 2008 10:40

On Page optimization is still relevant from the perspective of you need to have good clean code and good content.

The days of tricking search engines into thinking that your site is better than it really is are long gone, but a cleanly coded site will beat one that is full of junk hands down every day of the week.

That said, if you write a clean template using wordpress and add a couple of SEO plugins, all you need is good content to produce good on-page results.

As I have long said, make it easy for Google, and Google will love you. :)

Vi Wickam
Zello Partners
http://www.zello.us
Search Engine Marketing for Real Business

 

Posted by Vi Wickam at June 12, 2008 16:16

geesh... how many freakin blogs do we need on this... ONE.. we have enough disinformation about SEO already...

wait.. nm.. proceed.

 

Posted by paisley at June 12, 2008 18:03

seo as we know it will probably evolve but will take 3-5 years or so, i believe there will be next generation search engines which will use some advanced AI... until then were stuck with optimising and scouring the web for sites who will link to you! until one search engine takes the evolutionary step.

 

Posted by Chet Karsan at June 13, 2008 05:45

no it is far from dead - in fact, it is still a baby in terms of industry age and has much growth left- dont think for a second on-site SEO is dead - only a fool would think this.

 

Posted by David Lazar at June 13, 2008 07:25

How about SEO driving search engines towards better algorithm?

 

Posted by No Name at June 14, 2008 15:28

Thanks for discussing my Prophecy Article in Marketing Pilgrim (http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/05/13-prophecies-of-internet-marketing.html).

Previously, meta tags used to rule the search engine rankings. But, meta tags don't play much now-a-days for competitive keywords.

The offsite SEO is however is gaining more weight. Internal link structure also has a lot of influence now a days. But, that it a thing that you have the power to manipulate and spam. Rather than what the site is boasting for itself, search engines will eventually want to know what other sites are saying about the site.

But, I can bet onsite SEO is not going to die pretty soon as long as we are in the world of text-based web contents.

 

Posted by Asif Anwar at June 17, 2008 01:19

On page SEO will never die, considering the number of sites that vouch for top search engine rankings and alter their text content accordingly. Also, SEO is a relatively new concept and does not pose a massive threat to any search engine.

 

Posted by No Name at June 18, 2008 05:29

Suppose i have to give an importance in optimizing the website, i give 65%to On Page Optimization and 35% to Off Page Optimization

 

Posted by Plaveb at June 25, 2008 07:27

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