SEO Is Growing Up

"Search Engine Optimization is growing up. I am not ready to say the Wild West SEO days are completely eradicated, but in 2011 good search engine optimization is less about trickery and more about engaging content and audience development than ever before."

- Tom Schmitz

In a word, yes.

The most effective search engine optimization puts content at the forefront. If you pinned me down and forced me to give you a percentage, I'd say 90% of your resources should be dedicated to developing content that makes the web better. I'd say the remaining 10% should broken up into working to get that content in front of the right audiences and making sure that it's technically sound in terms of sending the right signals to search engines.

Unfortunately, many folks have an upside-down concept of SEO.

They spend of the majority of their resources trying to game and manipulate the signals that search engines use to organize their results. This is usually at the cost of developing content that has any value whatsoever.

While upside-down SEO can generate "some results, for some period of time" the bottom line is that instead of working to meet some demand for information, you've placed yourself at odds with the search engines.

So, you have to ask yourself, "Self, am I smarter than Google?" For most of you, I would suggest that the answer is no. Which brings us back to aligning your, and your clients' interests, with Google.

And this means developing engaging content.