Google's Shakeup: To SEO or Not to SEO

Many folks in the SEO circles as well as individual website owners noticed a lot of changes to Google's ranking recently. There talks about the "end of SEO" and how Google essentially put out of business a lot of SEO companies and SEO tool providers. I hear these talks even in the educated Ottawa SEO community.

Well, there are changes for sure! I don't think there is a reason to worry about the "end of SEO" because it is like saying "the end of search". Website owners will always need to optimize their websites for search engines so there will always be SEO work that has to be done on a website. The question is how "secretive" this work can continue to be.

There are many SEO tools that uninformed website owners sign up for and pay $50-90 per month. Well, most SEOs know that you can get the same results free of charge - just need to know where to look. And there were always 4-5 different places where you would go and run your reports.

Well, now, Google Chrome has come up with a web store - and it has everything your soul can desire for SEO and it is all in one place. Hip Hip Hurray!  But of course, those "secretive" SEO tools will probably go our of business, unless they lower their prices significantly or offer something of real value.

We noticed that on-page content matters much more. Google loves words. Lots of them. And it now pays more attention to the word order. In the past, "website design Ottawa" or "Ottawa website design" were almost interchangeable, but not now. Now you have to optimize your copy individually for each.

We also noticed that links from websites and blogs and forums specialized in your area of expertise give very fast results.

Oh well, all this is not new to us, and as a result, not much has changed for us. Our ratings did change, but slightly, we did not experience a serious shake-down.

SEO has been and still remains the three things: content (lots of it), keywords stuffed everywhere, and quality back links from other websites in your field.