When I was at SMX East, I met Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land I wanted to speak to Danny and find out his opinion on the recent updates from Google and the impact they have on search marketers. I have summarized our meeting at SMX.
What are the implication for the recent Google updates?
Google have been diligent with the Panda update. There are periodic updates from Google to fix issues within search, but Google need to communicate these updates better. They continued to tweak the algorithm but stopped making major announcements about the changes. However, they recently brought back the Google Dance, where they announce to users their latest update and the reason for it.
Those in search should know that there are always changes in the algorithm even if they may not realise it at the time. As search marketers, it is important to be proactive, instead of reactive for every update and having to change strategy.
How can SEOs stay ahead of Google?
SEOs need to have really good content and exceptional website. The search engines are tying to mimic the actions of humans. If you want people to find your site and keep coming back, make sure your site is designed to allow this to happen. Webmaster owners need to be proactive. Being white hat does not necessarily mean you are good at SEO. It means you do not engage in black hat SEO tactics.
What is your response to the Google news update?
We are going to watch it over the next few weeks as it was only released late last month. I feel it is more to stamp out criticism from the fact that Google has take stuff away from newspapers. Maybe Google is being sophisticated and giving the keyword tag as a title tag.
What is the future of SEO?
To me, SEO is the process of getting traffic from any search source and not paying for it as opposed for SEM in a non negative way. I also think SEO will still be largely about attracting traffic from Google, but will also continue to evolve bring in more traffic from more sophisticated services and also from mobile.
