Whenever there is some new technology or update emerging on the search engine scenario , the first thing people start posting on their blogs is – “So, Is SEO Dead With The Advent Of ….”
The Online marketing scene keeps on changing at a very fast pace and every year we have new trends emerging unlike the traditional form of marketing where more than the trend it was the strategies which had to be kept on changing.The emerging online marketing trends are due to the technological changes and the improvements in the internet services which have reached even to the remote and not so developed places .
As the year end approaches we keep on hearing that one form of marketing is a passé and some new form of marketing shall rule the roost in the forthcoming year. We have heard statements like Banner Ads. Are Dead, Email is Dead, SEO is Dead in the past years but inspite of all these claims we still see that these banner ads., email and SEO are still very much alive along with the fast emerging trends like social media.
I want to focus on SEO being very much alive inspite of all the developments and enhancements in the web world.
Let me give you a small example of a project we undertook in the year 2000. We were supposed to register the domain, develop the site, host the site and submit it to the search engines (yes we called it search engine submissions in 2000 rather than SEO ) The cost of the domain was Rs.3,000/- The hosting was approx. Rs.15,000/ - Rs. 20,000/- The development charges of a simple static site of 10 pages with a flash banner was Rs. 30,000/- but when we were talking about search engines to the client and explaining to him what a search engine was and of course the demo of search was given on www.altavista.com as that was the supreme uno search engine which everyone wanted a presence on in early 2000. The charges quoted for search engine submissions were Rs. 10,000/-
But now the scenario after 10 years is completely reversed as far as the cost of domain, hosting, development and SEO are concerned. Now SEO is the most sort after and a premium service and nobody thinks of having a website without optimizing it. So, this shows that though many times false alarms are raised by people that SEO is dead , SEO keeps on living infact keeps on evolving and growing with time and in fact become richer as a service when search engines enhance their search algorithms and keep adding more search options.
It is simple logic that SEO is search engine optimization so this service keeps on evolving and improving according to the evolution and improvements on the search engines.
Apart from the developments on the search engines on the other side the users are also more specific with their searches , more net savvy and are looking for more and more options . With these changes in the search behavior the competition among the search engines also gets an impetus leading to quality output from the search engines.
Hence the changes may cause some upheaval on the search scene and may give an impression of SEO no longer having its existence but the truth is that it just changes the approach to SEO and the modifications add more life to SEO rather than making it lifeless.
One more thing that needs to be kept in mind before making such ultimate statements like ‘SEO IS DEAD’ is that the search engines get their true identity because of organic search and if organic search is demeaned or given less importance to, the search engines will become advertising platforms or paid directories where there are no categories.
Organic search makes the web developer and SEO think about the nuances of the website and make the website more complete with the metatags giving an identity to the website and the other SEO aspects like content, alt text, headings, anchor text , clean code add to the quality and identity of the website reducing clutter on the web too. For paid listings you need not bother about these nuances of the site and yet get a ranking due to the purchasing power the company has.
Moreover, the search industry has given livelihood to so many people involved in SEO and also hopes to the SMEs and SMBs to target the global market competing with the giants of the same industry on the search engines. As search engines do not rank sites on the basis of balance sheets but on the basis of the site being up to the mark according to the search engine algorithms. This offers an equality of opportunities to all once you get a lead due to organic search which may have even gone to the top shot of that industry , how you deal and go ahead with the finalization of the deal depends on your expertise and knowledge which is fair enough.
