There has been some talk lately that the known Search Engine Optimization methods might not be as effective in the near future. Techniques such as:

  • Optimizing Web Site Content
  • Getting a lot of incoming links to a website
  • Creating rich text content websites

… might actually give way to more traditional, buzz marketing methods.

Why is this so? Well it seems the Search Engine Optimization has been used and abused too much. The Search Engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo want relevant content to come out on their results pages. As they tweak their algorithms, old known SEO techniques are identified and taken into consideration.

What’s your take on this?

A common discussion among Search Engine Marketing experts is the issue of overdoing SEO. Some experts argue that too much web marketing is penalized by Search Engines. This happens when web developers focus on content for search engines and not for people. We believe this occurs when:

  • Link-building is unnatural – you get 10,000 incoming links to your site in one day. Unless your web page was a victim of the ‘digg effect’, this volume of links is unheard of. Thus a site will receive penalties.
  • Using black hat methods to fool search engines. This includes hidden text and exploiting search engine flaws.

It’s quite alarming when this happens because the web pages would suddenly drop out of the search engine results page. We’ve seen it happen.