[Gowwward]

I've been reading quite a bit of material on Google recently and I've personally come to the conclusion that sooner rather than later, search engines such as google will almost dismiss the current SEO techniques used today with a couple exceptions. I would think that Keyword rich content, Titles, links etc are and will always be very important, but the older Google gets possibly 99.999% of it's results will be based on content and interaction only? Think about the difference from 2001 to 2006 and how much less value h2 tags etc give to SEO now. (this is all of course an assumption).

Question-!

My question is, from what you all know, is it really worth the time to label images and make sure h1 h2 tags etc are labeled with Keywords ?? and if so what % would you give to the "tried and true techniques" ? At this point I think it's still important enough to spend some time on, but what do you all think??

Thank you for your input! =)

[T2DMan]

There really is no question about how you should SEO - in its most basic form, it is creating content for users, and for Google to be able to get that information to users, and for users to appreciate the information that Google picks.

I have always considered therefore, that we should do everything right - its not that h1's or h2's are flavour of the month at any one stage, or that links are the be all and end all.... Find out what people are searching for, have your header tags correct, have your content correct, have you site mechanics correct... I personally find that it people/clients get this part right, then most times, the natural links that they have got will get them good rankings and good traffic.

If you do everything right, then no matter what the search engine algos throw at you, you will in general always be ranked well.

The issue becomes that when everyone does everything right, what is the deciding factor?

The deciding factor is LINKS. Now the issue is then how do you get those links, and how close to the wire do you play it? And in your playing the link game (after you have done all the onpage/onsite things correct), do you go over the line, or do you inadvertantly go over the line.

Yes, the new deciding factor is going to be the community and personalisation part. When people log into Google and it records their search preferences, and so brings those preferences higher in the results for their personal browsing. When labels mean that one site can be labeled and so given preference over another site equally as deserving, yet unlabeled. Yes, these are all actually a continuation of the linking theme - it will be those with the widest circulation of newsletters that can convince people to share their community labels, .... the new PR - public relations efforts.

So there we have it - do what you can now to get the best results now. Move with the times and embrace other search technologies as they develop.


Now I know that I have oversimplified it, and that there are many things that can go wrong, but in its purest form, the above is what I do, and what I am very successful in doing for people.

[T2DMan]

Thats the question. I see a forum in your sig, and when I look at it, the SEO has not been done well. I could do better, and get you better traffic as a result.

You are obviously after links, since you have signiture links.... and yes, links from this forum will certainly help.

But links are not everything, you first have to get the basics right, and you have yet to do the basics.