SEO Services & Link Building from SEO Expert

Day 2 of SMX West began with a keynote from Danny Sullivan, the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land. His topic… the state of search marketing.

The Search Quake
People’s attention to search engines waned during the explosion of Facebook and Twitter; it was no longer the new, cool kid on the block. But people still search and in recent months, the attention has been refocused.
Search in the news recently:

• The Dirty Little Secrets of Search: JC Penney uses “black hat” tactics to game search engines.
• A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web: A business owner tried for bad reviews because bad reviews improved his search ranking and an improved search ranking brought him more customers.
• “Farmer” Algorithm Update: Search engines take action against content spam.

Search engines have changed their algorithms to address these issues (and the PR issues), but these fixes have only been “duct tape” on the problem.


Search 4.0 – Socialization & Personalization

In 2007, Sullivan wrote an article titled Search 3.0: The Blended & Vertical Search Revolution. Vertical results like news, video, images, shopping did help to remove some noise, but socialization and personalization promises to return more relevant results and “Search 4.0”.
Before search engines, how did we find things? We used our family, friends, et al. This method was time consuming. Once the web and search engines arrived, we used them. Search engines are fast, trustworthy, and confidential. But the results are not always accurate – especially for subjective matters.


Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have taken our Before-Search-Engine sources and digitized them. So how will search engines integrate these people-powered sources into results? Both major search engines have started to work social signals into their regular results, but this functionality is still in its infancy. For more information, check out my previous post Social Signals and Search at SMX West.
Along with social signals, both major search engines also include personalized search results based on your search history. The result? These days there are no more “normal” results; all search results are affected by social signals and personalization.


So… Is SEO Dead?


If search engines are using other methods to improve results, does this mean that SEO is dead?
The answer: definitely not. Core search results are still the same – social signals and personalization only tweak those core results which are still affected by SEO.

So keep striving for increased SEO! Find more on SEO on the Microsoft Advertising Community.
Thanks!

David Kline - Program Manager, Global Web & Community Team