SEO that's just based on rankings is Dead according to Tadeusz Szewczyk in 10 Steps to Success on the ’Net Without SEO over at Google Blogoscoped. I may do another post just on where I agree with Tadeusz and where I have additional ideas.
".. In order to make a site succeed in these times you have to forget everything you know about on page optimization and link building first."
The list of things to do is pretty much all the stuff I do.
People were saying SEO was Dead in 2003 and there's a thread on SEO DEAD at Webmasterworld. Meanwhile, Search Engine Guide's Stoney deGeyter mentions that SEO Only Providers will be dead soon, but SEO itself will be alive. Mike Grehan, on the other hand, wrote a post called SEO Is Dead. Long Live, er, the Other SEO for ClickZ last year.
What's dying is focusing on SEO as top 10 rankings, not SEO, itself - that part is going away according to SearchRank. "…“All I ask now is that we get rid of this stupid search engine marketing/search engine optimization nomenclature that persists in this industry.”
Geting back to Tadeusz Szewczyk, here's this 10 points:
"…Discover your niche—”Be different, choose a topic or product that not everybody else already covers or sells. Discovering it is not to be confused with ‘keyword research’ as in conventional SEO. You try to introduce a new niche not just obeying the Google users[’] demands.”
- Use Wordpress—That’s WordPress. “Instead of ‘on page optimization’ you can install Wordpress that is search engine friendly out of the box.” Well, don’t tell the large number of SEO bloggers on WordPress who’ve done posts, series, vidcasts and more on making WordPress SEO-compliant.
- Create a killer CSS design and submit it to CSS galleries—”Traditional SEO is all about link building or getting links. Sites doing SEO often look crappy. These days people link web sites that look great just for the sake of the design.”
- Allow trackbacks, use dofollow
- Socialize, write comments and link other blogs
- Include social media on your site, use social media yourself
- Write your own content, say something new, express yourself
- Compile what you know or what others said and publish it—”If everything was said and done already in a particular case, compile it and create a list. Top list are the best solutions…”
- Contribute to your favorite online publications—”Most publishers will link to your site.”
- Add new content at least every second day
Sounds like making a site into a WordPress Blog and promoting it via Social Media would answer most of the problems, according to what I read above.
I think it depends on the site - some sites really can't implement this strategy (ie: large corporate sites) but many more could and don't.
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