New and Essential Facts about SEOs and the recent trends.

As the internet space expands, it is also getting increasingly crowded.
It is getting crowded not only because of the growing density of users from all over the world, and all types of enterprises, small, medium and tiny, but also because of the growing so-called search engines. But the Big Three of the SEOs still remain, the Yahoo!, Google and MSN, and not necessarily in that order.
As more and more customers of these Search engines grow, it is but obvious that the competition to get the first page ranking gets higher and higher and more and more competitive. Since the Search engines do not list the websites based on commercial considerations alone – read money like in placing ads in prominent spots in newspapers – obviously the game is based on keyword density, and usefulness of the website sought to be listed.

In earlier days, when the internet was not such a marketable commodity as it has now become, and because of its availability 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year, or 366 days in a leap year, keyword density occupied pride of place.

Today with the search engines themselves having to compete with each other to seek customers, paying customers, and the need for ranking felt by the websites, the rules of the game are changing. To get hits on their search engines, implies their popularity, and in turn popularity determines how much ad revenue can they garner to maintain their competitive position.

As has been warned by many SEO specialists and others who write copy for websites, the onus of getting into the number one to 50 positions lead on these search engines has shifted from repeat keywords density to appropriate keywords, quality content, and link building. These are to be read concurrently, and there is no operand as either or, and or, algorithms to use. In other words, search engines are now using software and other soft skills to test whether a particular website trying to be listed matches the three components mentioned above. If they don’t and some other website is better worded and contains better links and landing pages, then, the second gets the first place, while the others get downgraded.

How to avoid these new pitfalls, and how prepared are the website owners, the SEO writers and other communities which contribute to these sites? Well, first of all the website owners don’t have a clue. They only have a focus which they have heard time and again in the past, and it is keyword density, keyword density. Against this the SEO specialists have to content with their customers, namely the website owners and the rewritten rules of the game by the search engine operators. Obviously a bridge that has to be built and crossed quickly because rankings also slip on a 24 hour, 365/366 days a year (leap year included).

First and foremost search engine operators are now looking at website domains themselves. If they are of a particular type, for example, dot .cc dot. oc. or similar sounding end alphas, or such a variation, down goes the ranking straightaway, no matter what key words it has, what beautiful content it has and what fantastic links it has. It is considered as spam website. If the website gets through this first barricade, up comes the second, keyword density and relevance of the content to the keyword. This can’t be done by a machine alone. It requires computer logic and also some amount of human input which compares whether the content matches the keyword, whether it describes it fully and whether it is a play upon the ‘keyword’, and so forth. If it be so, again down the tube. If the links are not pointing to other seemingly genuine websites, or has a good landing page, and does not seem to point to the spam websites mentioned above, then it has the third barricade to cross, namely, the competitor who has also got through. Then it is a question of how well the content is worded, and how germane the other is to the subject matter on which it is being sought to be ranked.

So SEO specialists have their hands full, and copywriters have to wring their hands and heads to come up with solutions that would keep their clients happy, and their cash registers clanging, apart from drawing new clients to their drawing boards.
So beware, a revolution is taking place. This author is reminded of the fights that take place between clients and ad agencies in the good old fashioned newspaper ads, where you could buy the space for a premium but catching the attention of the reader was an entirely new cup of tea. Remember the ad which one of the car hire companies wrote: “We are second. That’s why we try harder”. Well, well, it’s coming to the internet marketplace sooner than later.