The end of search engine marketing?

I want to go back to the turn of the millennium, not for nostalgia's sake but because it all seemed so easy then, at a time when I was first introduced to website structuring and marketing. It seems now that those days were so easy once you had the keys to unlock the mysteries of how search engines placement was attained.

In those days there were two main tools of the trade. First, a review of the volumes on searched keywords from the pioneer of pay-per-click advertising, Overture. With an intelligent structuring of these keywords, we were able to gain high placement. Next, we had bought a copy of Web Position Gold and all one had to do was point it to the site, add the keywords and press go. Simple.

In late 2005, in an attempt to fight the growing influence of spam and other techniques intended to trick Google's search model, the company implemented the Jagger update. Its intent was that of inbound link "relevancy" and other new and unresolved "canonical" issues.

This update was disastrous for some and I wrote at the time that "for weeks the returns for 'web site design bangkok' were: - first up is Bangkok hotel and Thailand travel guide. Instead of looking at the title and on-page copy they have used the link url of the designers, Web Design Copyright © 2005 by Asia Web Direct Co., Ltd. - next is Asian Institute of Technology. This site is about advanced education in engineering and science. They do, not too unreasonably, have a web mail link which obviously deserves a high position to compete with the web designers here. - remarkably, following that is Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development with the title HTTP Error 404?. This is the most ludicrous of them all as 'Le serveur Web ne parvient pas à trouver le fichier ou le script demandá. Vérifiez l'URL pour vous assurer que le chemin d'accès est correct, ou bien allez' definately has a certain ring to it when searching for an English-speaking web designer in the metropolis. - then The Peninsula Bangkok. This is one of Bangkok's premier hotels and nowhere on the home page is there even the mention of the word 'web'. The hotel does, however, have a wave-shaped 'design' and therefore should be positioned along with the city's web designers. - and, finally, is Conference on Trade and Development. Here, they have not indexed the title of the page but have seen fit to index 'Free Website Stats and Website counter by WebSTAT'." As I say, it was disastrous.

This update had search engine marketers in a state of disorientation. With Jagger, Google had once again attempted to outsmart huge numbers in the industry who had spent a vast amount of time legitimately but falsely making their websites seem more relevant and important than they really were.

At the time we added value to our placement by swapping links and placing links on free directories but Google said it much preferred it when the linking site "adds value to enhance the value of a site's content or to increase credibility and authority". And that's exactly what Jagger was meant to do -- when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance.

At the same time Google downgraded or eliminating reciprocal linking as a measure of popularity -- and I am remain amazed that I still receive daily requests for this even today. But, in short, Jagger undid the hard work of thousands of SEO professionals and, as a result, hard-won high rankings and revenues plummeted.

Also, around that time, there came to the rescue Web 2.0. This was revolutionary. We could add content, diversify keywords and get listed on a huge range of blogging and RSS directories. The web was no longer about passive reading; it was about sharing content and increasingly websites were disseminating their news via blogs and articles. I wrote at the time that "gone are the days of mailers, link exchanges and non-industry-related links, it now all about writing relevant content."

Later on it was discovered that some of the highly popular blog sites, in my case problogger.com and mattcutts.com, were a sure-fire way of getting "relevant" high PageRank inbound links. This next phase saw the marketers leaving comments on a raft of these blog sites. This worked for a time too.

Then we had domain name domination, where for branded companies not having the search term in your domain name put you at a distinct disadvantage. I launched two sites at the beginning of 2008 with the express intention of proving this point. I was at #1 on the first in seven days and #1 on the other in two. They remain at #1 even though no link building has been undertaken for 11 months.

The other aspect of what we were being told was to submit articles. Fine for those of us who could attempt it but for most companies, except for the larger one with their own in-house PR division, there was rarely anyone who felt qualified and most clients skipped over that option.

As Google went into overdrive in cutting out virtually all links from the directories we had once dutifully but painstakingly subscribed to, and blog comments started to insert "no follow" tags, outside of writing copy where did we go for our links?

The SEO community, mainly based and outsourced from India, put up "packages" where you could buy 100 links, 500 links, 1,000 links. The cost of this seemed exorbitant and almost nowhere did they mention the relevance or the value of these links. Some of the better companies set about on personalised campaigns but to date I have not seen any of the links they provided being indexed. The reason: they are bought.

There may be companies out there providing a legitimate service but I know of none. Every single one of them I have approached will provide linkbacks with anchor text from websites with a maximum PageRank 4, but of all the companies I know they have provided this service for, not one solitary link has been indexed by Google.

So where does this leave the industry? It's possible to look at your competitors and register them yourself, but the essence of this article is what has become of the search engine marketing companies. They are still operating; they are still out there. But what value can they now pass on to their customers where reciprocal linking is dead, forums and directories have been de-indexed, blog comments are no longer available, RSS directories moribund and link buying outlawed?

Search engine marketing is not the business it once was and I am unconvinced that the industry is now able to deliver. People are totally at a loss as to where to go in such a depleted system of non-available options.

Search Engine Marketing