Don’t get confused, seo isn’t dead…but rank reporting is going obsolete.

Within the recent month's the major search engines, particulary the almightly Google have made some very drastic algorithm updates which have been tossing up search engine rankings like an ocean tempest.  Reliable search engine "ranking reports" are now thing a thing of the past for most search engines (especially Google).   So for example lets say that you own a flower delivery service website.  On your own computer you are ranking on page 1 of Google for "flower delivery".  On another computer a mile away your website listed on page 3 for the exact same phrase. on another computer a few miles away your website is on page 4, then on the computer in building next to you you are listed nowhere at all.  

Why is this happening?  There are several reasons, but one particular major change is due to what search engines call "personalized search engine results".  So lets say you are working in a office and you have a co-worker who is a programmer.   You happen to work in public relations and you love coffee.  You both do a google search for the keyword "java".   You get results about coffee.  He gets results about programming language.  He is only a few feet away.   Why is this?  Google is now looking at your past search history and delivering personalized search results on your preferences.   This is making consistent ranking for general, ambigous keywords next to useless (a trend that has been happening for years...but finally taking full effect)

It was first believed that Google would only deliver personalized search results depending if the web surfer had a Google account or not.   Some search engine optimization experts noticed that  personalized results where being observed even when web surfer had  no Google account.   Also your particular location and IP address can effect your search results as well.  

So is it time to stand on your roof and yell at passerby's that "SEO is DEAD!!!" ???  What is the point in optimizing your website if you can no longer impact how the search engines rank your results?   Not so fast.

The surprising answer is SEO is still an very effective strategy for internet marketing (at least for the time being).  Why?  For ranking and indexation search engine algorithms still need to know what your website is about and your website could benefit from optimization.

Here are a few keypoints

Search Engines need to know what your website is about

Search engine algorithms still need something to grab onto to understand what your website is about.   Creating good quality content and optimizing your title, header, h1 still make a very big difference.  They can make your website show up for certain keyword searches.  So if you are selling coffee and you have your website optimized for "java" somebody searching for java (and has a history of browsing coffee sites") your optimized webpage has a much better probability of being ranked high.

Focus on traffic, forget rankings

The toughest part of this change is explaining to the average layman that keyword ranking no longer reliable.  I can't tell you how many times i have spoke with clients and the issue of  "my competitor is ranking higher than me for so and so phrase" conversation is brought up.  To absolve this issue make sure to focus more on the end product: traffic.   Having optimized webpages will help you bring in more traffic from the right visitors (higher rankings OVERALL).  Make sure to have detailed analytics reports.  Google Analytics is always a good option.

The only exception to the "ranking reports are dead" theory is if you can use a tool that checks ranking reports on multiple IP address.  There are a few out there.  One free and simple one is at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/multiple-datacenter-google-search/.  This tool allows you to check your search engine rankings across multiple datacenters to see how well you are ranking.    For example our website seprodigy.com was consistently ranked on the first page for "web marketing" on multiple datacenters when we tested this tool.

You can also get a good idea of how your search engine rankings are appearing by using the Google Webmaster Tools program (it's free!). This is basically a ranking report "straight from the source" where Google reports your highest viewed/clicked keywords and their average positions.

After you activate your account you will see a option on the right hand side for "Statistics". From there click on "Top Search Queries".

Notice how Google specifically says "from all search all locations". This is a decent indicator of how your SEO/Web Marketing efforts are panning out.

Just remember that good keyword research, content optimization and quality landing pages still goes a long, long way to getting your website better visibility.  SEO may no longer the end all, be all. But it is still a strong backbone to almost any internet marketing campaign.