Over the last few years (in-fact year after year), website owners with traditional businesses have always felt that there must be "free" web traffic out there. Most have heard of the phrase "Search engine optimisation" (SEO) and probably even more fell into one or more of the snake-oil companies promising the earth.

It is well worth the non-SEO expert, with a root in the real world, taking the time to read this article, to understand that SEO in 2010 is nothing like SEO of a few years ago and to see why modern SEO is both simple to grasp and incredibly complex - if not impossible - to master in 2010.

It should help you change you approach to SEO and take your strategic view beyond many of the companies still promising the earth for "little or no money down".

The roots of SEO and why they do not work in 2010

As soon as search engines started to exist, back in the 1990s, their business model was typically advertising related. Some companies tried to build search engines where you paid for the service, but the public gravitated towards the free services like Yahoo and AltaVista. The problem was that the adverts - typically banners - where nowhere near as sophisticated as the search engine algorithm itself, so the search results were WAY more targeted than the banners.

Users very quickly learnt to ignore the display advertising of old. Seconds later, SEO was born.

At that time - the search engines were based on understanding (predominantly) the content of the web page they were indexing. In particular the TEXT on the page. They weren't interested in pictures, so much, and certainly the web was growing so fast that there was no effective way for search engines to properly understand how a web page sat in relation to every other web page on the internet.

This meant that people developed the notion that there must be "some" kind of magic formula that would put their web page at the top of the search engines, if they just built the page in the right way. This was great. After all, if users were looking at the top results, instead of the untargeted adverts, then a "free" top results was worth fortunes. These were the days of "Keyword stuffing", moving on to "H1 tags" and ""Title Tags".

It did work - for those that stayed ahead of the curve - but the pace of change and the increase in complexity of the search engines have made this partly a fool's errand - at least when treated in isolation. (This coming from a leading SEO company, so you know there's a "BUT" at the end.)

The search engines increased their relevancy, ultimately, by not by relying on the text on the page any more. This first manifested itself in the 90s with a company called "GoTo", later called "Overture" who - for some years - changed the face of search results by allowing advertisers to buy - on a per click basis - the top few results on many of the search engines, including MSN.com.

Then Links became a significant factor in a search engine's understanding of a web page's authority in context - so that a page could not be an authority across too many keywords at once. Link building remains highly important to users to the algorithms to this day, in the traditional results... but now the game has changed again. Twice.

What's different today?

If you look at a modern day search engine, like "Bing", then the old "text based" results are not as important as they used to be. The modern search engines have reduced the effect of any manipulation of these results in part by better understanding the USER's requirements, rather than the web page's profile. In doing so, one of the first questions a search engine asks itself (in a mathematical sort of way) when a user types in a search are questions like:

- What do I know about this user? (How can I use this to help give better results?)

- Where in the world are they? (And does this make a difference?)

- Do they want Pictures? News? Video? A Map? (None of which apply to the old school SEO techniques above)

- Are they using a mobile device? If so will they want something different?

- How should I mix and match results of different types of data?

These kinds of questions are not things that a web page can easily influence. Most of these questions change the very data sources that the search engine displays to the user. How can you expect to get the "number 1 slot" on a web result if - for one user - this is a map and for another user it is a trusted newspaper report? Of course, you cannot. Or at least, your only way to do this is to reach BEYOND the search engines, to get into the mind of your ideal user.

That means that modern Internet marketing strategies have to play to the traditional marketing theories as well.

Your BEST bet in search is to convince the user to not type in a generic phrase in the first place. But rather to type in your brand.

Failing that, you need to go WAY further into your customer's mindset than saying "I want to be number one for...[add keyword here]. Your customer isn't typing that word into the search engine in EXACTLY that way. They may capitalize the first letters - did you take into account that this might suggest something about their age? They may frame their keyword by adding a region. So many things change the datasets being used in the results, that - like doubling a single grain of rice on ever square on a chessboard - you soon find that all the rice in China will not be enough to fill the beast.

I promised a "but" though.

The "but" is that in diversifying the data sets, the search engines have given smaller companies renewed possibilities to shine. I don't think that it can be denied that the quality and relevance of search results in 2010 are a world away from the quality of (say) 2005. At times, in a given industry, it appears a single company dominates a market - but even if they do, the search results generally endeavour to provide diversity.

Bing - in particular - is helping users to make an informed choice before they click. SEO still has a huge value - but in much more targeted situations. It needs to be preceded by a clear understanding of your target users on a one-to-one level and also the internet marketing needs to be aligned with other marketing, to closely associate your brand with a particular type of user journey - a journey where the website itself may be only a transitory step to purchase or conversion.

Yes - SEO is still hugely important. But now every visitor from organic traffic is important because every visitor represents a person - not a number.

Thanks

Dixon Jones

www.receptional.com