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philh
Joined: Sep 14, 2001
# Posts: 3050
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Posted: 2004-Jan-28 13:06
I see a lot of people brushing up their knowledge of Inktomi's "requirements" for top placing after taking a battering at G's hands - and I find it slightly worrying.
Once, we understood what G wanted - and we prospered. Then G engaged reverse gear - what helped before, is killing us now - i.e. keyphrase in title, headers, first para and in inbound text links etc etc - a combination that can bury a site today. OK, a lot of people are hurting, but it isn't our search engine, so we can't call the shots.
MSN decides to lose LookSmart and Yahoo buys Ink - the game is on again!
We have seen G throw the doll out of the pram and so we head on over to Ink to save the day. But what if Ink goes the same way? Once again - it isn't our search engine - we don't call the shots.
Then there is Fast, Ask and AltaVista - but, NO ONE USES THEM.
So, without a huge authority site, where would that leave the SEO industry - flogging PPC or turning to the "Dark Side"? Well, I predict with PPC, the clients will be buying copies of BidRight and bringing it in-house in many cases. And the "Dark Side"? Don't go there - don't even think about it - armed robbery is less fraught! As the engines mop up the last few cloaking techniques, re-directs and scripting tricks the last of the "players" will fade into the shadows and die, many taking their clients' sites with them into oblivion.
The future? Apart from praying for a new SE to be born - a foolish strategy I think - there is little hope for the mom'n'pop site - the SEMs will bow to the big bucks - that wonderful dream of the web as a level playing field will fade into history just like the Klondike gold rush.
What can we do? Very little if you're used to SEO as it was, where a few tweaks to a page put a site on top. I can only see people who are totally dedicated, with lots of time on their hands making any headway - and even they need to operate in a space that is relatively "unfarmed". To compete with the big boys means loadsa links - not the number that can be obtained with emails starting "I saw your site today and..." I mean the links generated by people who think your site is special and link to you because they feel it is worthy and of interest to their visitors - and to create such a site is no easy task. If you are a naturally gifted writer, you may be able to generate the content required, if you have a truely niche product/service/idea.
SEOers, in a way, have been unpaid beta testers for the big SEs for a long time and now they are no longer required - Still, at least the designers can start using Flash again!
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines - there's a lot of work to done.
Opinions?
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MakeMeTop
Joined: Jul 05, 2000
# Posts: 1714
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Posted: 2004-Jan-28 13:24
Two immediate points.
The first is that INK does have a contractual relationship with some SEM providers over and above the standard "pay us money and we'll put you in the DB somewhere". In order to preserve the integrity of their DB and to make pay-to-play work, they lay down and provide some pretty accurate guidelines as to how to get the most from a listing both in editorial/ranking terms and in ROI terms. Now, these are not publicised, but they do exist - trust me 
If any drastic changes were made to the INK algo, some would be advised as to how to use these changes to their clients (which are also clients of INK) best advantage. Now, this is not going to be exactly good news for "organic" SEO people - but INK/Yahoo want people to like their listings, so I don't think that they are going to go the Google route which is (as far as I can see) to become a PPC provider to other portals with AdWords and AdSense which is where the money is. Remember when Overture deliberately stopped promoting themselves as a search destination? They did it because they no longer wanted to compete with companies who they supplied PPC sponsored listings to. Might not the current Google situation be a similar thing? They no longer become a resource for commercial searches and leave it to the major portals and displayers of AdWords to provide the information people are looking for!
The second is that the new, improved Google has an algo. Sites are appearing in the top 10 (bizarre as they may be) but there is an overall theme running through the results. Good SEOs will be working on a strategy of using this to their advantage which will, obviously, require a radical rethink on previous on-page methods. But it is do-able. The evidence is right in front of us 
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philh
Joined: Sep 14, 2001
# Posts: 3050
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Posted: 2004-Jan-28 13:37
>radical rethink on previous on-page methods
You're right there! I have been optimising a site this very morning and even I can't believe what I was doing!
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