I’ve been reading some articles lately that some people think that hardcore SEO (search engine optimisation) is a dying art. SEO only works because search engines are not clever enough to sort out real content and relevancy, and so business currently pays SEO’s to manipulate pages so they rank higher in the SERPS then they would naturally. As long its not using black hat techniques, there’s nothing wrong with this and with a basic understanding of search engine algorithm its something most people can do and it certainly can be taught.
I pretty much see the role of SEO being merged with the role of On-line Marketing Manager. I think the SEO skill will change to some degree too, moving away from the tweaking of code and getting keyword balances right to something else. I have already seen some of the next versions of search engines and there’s allot of work on semantics currently which is likely to see the current SEO companies that offer what I call the core services getting into allot of difficulties. Perhaps like all things on the internet, SEO is growing up and now we are going to get On-line Marketing managers with specialist SEO skills, rather than SEO’s with on-line marketing skills.
Another important development is the semantic web which may completely change the way we surf the internet and use search engines. At the moment when we look for stuff on the net, we visit a search page and enter a few keywords. Then we get lots of results, some relevant, some not. We have to visually check the pages to look for answers and then we don’t really know if the advise being given is correct or not, and so we check other pages to see if they agree. We still don’t really know and just assume its the correct answer since it appears many sources are saying the same thing.
What the Semantic web will do is allow you to query a search engine with a question and it will return an answer by collating information from all sources and deciding upon its answer, rather than pages of results that may or may not be correct. As you can imagine the semantic web could make allot of people redundant as there will be no need for many web sites or Search engine optimiser since the retrieved information won’t depend on things like incoming links to make it relevant, but instead it will simply return the answer without displaying third party advertisements. This is really going to annoy allot of people and worry business, but not the big boys because it reduces their competition from smaller, less trusted or official information sources.
This doesn’t mean the end of affiliate programs and content. It will mean the end of people creating content purely for advertising purposes. People who make content for this purpose will have to look for new ways to sell content and deliver it on the semantic web. I am already thinking about that and my theory is that there may be a shift to audio content, especially since that there’s already a move on to viewing information on the web using mobile devices rather than clunky pc’s. Imagine, the semantic web retrieving a part answer but for more a complete one the surfer can download an audio file using a micro payment solution. Some say, its more likely to be a video file, but I do disagree as its just far more practical to listen to something than watch it. People on the train listen to ipods, but not many watch them fearing they might miss their stop!
That’s my theory, the semantic web may force a change from the printed word to the spoken one. Audio interfaces are already reality, I use one sometimes at home. I can tell my PC to “**** off” which shuts down the PC which gives me some sadistic pleasure. The point is, it seems to me that there’s already a move away from the written word. I may be wrong.. Who knows!
