subject: Is SEO Science or Art? [print this page] Is SEO Science or Art? Is SEO Science or Art?
Long gone are the days of "Build It And They Will Come"
As you may or may not know SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is commonly known as a cheap way to get traffic. But SEO isn't just about getting great rankings in the search engines or about getting tons of free traffic.
No SEO company can assure you high listings. With many updates regularly happen on Google and nobody really knows the algorithms used for page rankings.
This January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with "shallow" or "low-quality" content. Google has just announced a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.
Google has changed it's algorithm (known as "Farmer" or "Panda") aimed at identifying low-quality pages and sites. These are pages (often found on "content farms") with text that is relevant for a query, but may not provide the best user experience. (Google calls it a "high quality sites algorithm".) This month, Google has rolled this change out to all English language queries and made a few minor updates this is estimated to have an impact on 12% of U.S. queries.
So what does that mean to you?
Ignoring SEO could be like having no signs and blank windows in your building. Potential customers will drive past your shop, not even realizing you are there.
Nine in 10 organizations use blogs, whitepapers, webinars, infographics, and other high quality content to leverage for link building and to attract natural, organic links. Not only can use your content to build links, but you can use it to build leads as well by proving the business knows their stuff when it comes to their industry.
How you leverage all this is the task of the SEO consultant. So the question is Art? or Science?
Creativity is the Art part of this equation it can be used for instance in things like:
Exploring the types of content that your ideal buying audience is seeking
Making the most out of things like high interest topics using more original creative means like working with nostalgia.
By using creativity, you can often pull in the largest audiences for the maximum percentage of the time, while being completely different. Creativity and SEO helps separate you from the competition which also gives you advantages.
SEO is the Science part of this equation. It is also the part most people think you need to be rocket scientist to use it:
Use of Google Analytics helps you with analysis of traffic on your site
The Google Keyword Tool Box is where most of the free and paid Google resources can be found.
Google Webmaster site can check your website current status. Also provides methods to better optimize site content.
So what is comes down to is that you or someone else must combine both the Creative and Science parts to enable a successful SEO campaign. There are No shortcuts....
