But my irritation at the sheep-like search engine optimisation community is just too powerful to resist this opportunity to give my fingers free reign at the keyboard.
It's just this rankings are dead thing. People have been saying it for a while. But Bruce Clay made a splash about it recently (splash link is to a video if there is anybody else in the world like me who hates to wait for a video to load that will then take up 10 times more of your time than the equivalent text content). And I guess he got what he wanted because he got a lot of coverage and links from saying it.
But now everyone and his dog is saying it.
Now I'm not saying all this talk is groundless. Follow any of the links in the above paragraph to find out about how more localised results, video, images and oh dear yes Google's personalised search will or may effect the way Google orders search results.
And I have no beef with the other point the seo sheep bleat: the one about how high rankings are useless if the people who come to your site don't convert (buy/contact you/sign up) when they get there.
But I would argue the converse is also true. In other words, the old seo chestnut about great content that converts well being useless if nobody comes.
And how are people going to get there? Digg? Stumbleupon? Twitter? Friendfeed?
I don't think so, not if they aren't looking for the latest article on How Best To Tweet to your Tweeps or similarily naval gazing tactics that is.
No. The majority will be searching on Google. If I actually wanted something, that is where I would go.
And what would I click on? Why the results on the first page of course, maybe some from the second page, even the third if I really needed something. Would I be clicking on videos? No way. Why waste time? Images? Local? Maybe, if they looked like they might lead to something genuinely useful.
I had a sudden panic here. Am I just reflecting my age in the way I search? So I went and conducted a not entirely scientific survey and asked daughter 2 what she would do if she had to search for something. We picked buy New Rave clothes because that was something she recently had to do for a themed party.
So what would this tech-savvy screen-addicted YouTube-watching teen do? Well, she would go to Google and then:
- I definitely wouldn't look at the video" (yesssss!)
- I might look at the images but I would check they wern't something silly like Jennifer is wearing... (she was watching Friends at the time)
So basically, she would do the same as me. Click on the text results in the first page or two of the Google results.
So for both of us Google and the websites that rank are what count - however they got there.
Really, what I am saying is that I still believe the best way to get business for my customers is to get them on the first page of as many relavent popular Google search results as possible - ie to get them to rank.
That would certainly include optimising images for search; video too if it was affordable. Local optimisation for local businesses is obviously a must.
And I would absolutely ensure that what people who click on my customer's websites get when they come is content as good as can make it. I also would try and make it very easy for them to convert. All these things I would test with website analytics software (another of the shiboleths of the rankings are dead crowd.
And good content seems the best way to get promoted in personalised search too - except by competitors of course who, in the smallish local search results I am interested in for my customers, are as far as I can see the only ones using Google's personalised search so far. (Note to self: save anti-personalised search rant for another post)
There are others of similar mind.
As I see it, rankings, far from being dead, are still the number one consideration for SEOs. How we do it may change. But without them, it's us not the rankings but us who will be dead.
