SEO Is Not Dead

There has always been a buzz about how SEO is a dying marketing technique that has merely stayed afloat due to the shady techniques used in the past to take advantage of the search engines. But, the actual purpose of SEO is beyond the use of manipulative tactics to rank higher in the search results page.

The ‘death’ of SEO depends on what one believes the definition of SEO means. If people believe that SEO is a means of circumventing the search engines by overstuffing their title tags with keywords and using linking strategies to garner more traffic to their website, then, SEO is truly dead. But, the main objective of SEO is as the name suggests. It is a search engine optimization tool that focuses on optimizing its website in such a way that it helps the search engine to navigate and categorize the site based on its quality content and relevance to the search query. With this definition, it is easy to say that SEO will only die if the search engines themselves cease to provide value.

If the above statement is true, then why do many believe that SEO is a dying or it is already dead? Well, most of these naysayers are guilty of utilizing SEO tactics themselves to get more views and links to their blogs or articles. So, in that sense, there are many reasons why SEO is not dead, and the techniques used are ever-changing. This is why you should ignore this buzz and get your real estate website optimized with the help of a detailed SEO strategy to maximize your reach with potential buyers.

Shape-shifting SEO:

The traditional sense of SEO which involved tweaking your title tags and meta tags, and applying internal and external linking worked before the optimization of the search engines and the improvement of the algorithms used to rank the websites. Because the search engines are constantly changing to improve their search results, SEO will undergo a continuous modification as well. In this article about the ever-shifting qualities of SEO, it is evident that the changes in the algorithms have a definite impact on how SEO is applied.

Outsmarting search engines is a thing of the past. The only way to improve your real estate website’s ranking is to improve upon your content and website navigation. In this sense, many believe that SEO and content marketing will merge, or SEO will become another part of online marketing. Even if this is true, the existence of SEO will not change, and it is best to keep up with the ever-shifting trends.

Semantic searches: The future of search engines

The reason why SEO has a shady past is because the SEO specialists made use of manipulative techniques, to take advantage of the shoddy algorithms used by search engines, to rank higher in the results page. But, with the release of the Google Panda algorithm in February 2011 and its counterpart Penguin in April 2012, Google had delved into the world of machine learning. Panda helped to filter out the low-quality sites while Penguin helped to weed out the ones that are spamming the keyword searches.

Now, a simple tweaking of the title tag alone will not guarantee your spot among the top “real estate” searches. With the advancement of the search engine algorithms comes the development of machine learning that changes the way search engines handle queries. With the evolution of semantic search Google is able to understand and identify the concept behind the content and link it to relevant words and articles, in our case the real estate business. This implies that the future of SEO lies not in keyword and links but the content of the web pages.

User-experience and content optimization:

Web sites that provide an excellent user experience are the ones that garner more traffic and attention. If your real estate website is difficult to load, or the site navigation is vague and cluttered the chances of receiving links are reduced. By utilizing on-page optimization and improving your site’s conversion rates, you can engage your users with quality content and interactive elements.

Even if your load speed is high and you rank among the top results, your ranking will drop if your content does not meet the requirements of the user. Providing the necessary information in a way that is easy for the user to comprehend and holds their attention is the primary goal for all businesses.

Platform optimization:

Nowadays, everyone has a smartphone that allows them access to the internet. Because it is portable and easy to use, the number of mobile searches has increased beyond that of PC searches. This drastic change forces all businesses, including the real estate business, to optimize their websites for all platforms whether it may be PC, mobile, tablets, etc. Google has issued penalties for sites that fail to make this transition.

The way we access the internet undergoes a constant change, and the search engines provide the necessary updates to offer seamless transitions between the various platforms. Optimizing the pages for a quicker load speed on the particular platforms is a job for SEO and as such SEO will remain a necessary tool despite the changes.

The shift in skill-set:

Though there are many that believe that these changes are a sign that SEO is irrelevant, the more likely outcome is that SEO has evolved beyond the traditional methods and now encompasses a wider set of skills and capabilities. Though the optimization of keywords and the use of linking strategies are still applicable, the effectiveness of such strategies has declined and replaced by more organic SEO tactics that involve content optimization and conversion rate strategy.

The primary goal of SEO is to help search engines to navigate the websites, and search engines do so by identifying certain key factors to rank the page appropriately. As long as that occurs, SEO specialists are needed to help the search engines maneuver through the web pages. Even if the traditional methods of SEO are not effective, by diversifying their skill set, an SEO specialist will be able to compete against their competitors in securing high ranking in the online environment. And so, SEO will never be truly dead but will undergo changes to suit the ever-changing search engine algorithm and criteria.