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Last month at PubCon, Bruce Clay made a powerful statement that stirred up a tremendous buzz in the SEO crowd. He expounded further upon his declaration that “ranking is dead” in his WebProNews video interview with Mike McDonald. While many people agree with Bruce on this matter, many people also disagree.
In the above video from SES Chicago, Bruce clarifies his bold statement.
“There is always going to be a reason to have ranking.”
With all of Google’s efforts to further personalization and localization, SEOs need to focus on the real objective. According to Bruce, this SEO objective is improving or increasing the profitability of the client.
In 2009, Bruce predicts that we will see an evolution toward traffic action and ultimately, return on investment (ROI) as the measurements of success for an SEO program. Clients want a lot of traffic and they will realize that it brings them a lot of ROI.
Bruce explains 2 new tools that he has created to help marketers better understand this objective. The toolbar is designed to literally modify the results of a Google search to provide demographical data. The second tool is a keyword research tool that pulls the exact API’s from a Google or MSN search for a given list of keywords. Bruce is working with Yahoo to make this tool accessible for Yahoo searches as well.
Both these tools are free and are projected to be public at the end of this month. Bruce points out that these tools are beneficial because marketers need this information and the tools help them to reach their specific target market and understand their true statistics.
Also, be sure to look for Bruce’s all-in-one Search Engine Optimization for Dummies book that is set for release in March.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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I have to agree with diamonds here, if ranking is dead or dying, then why would we be talking about this? Either way, seo’s are going to have a job, the difference is just going to be it’s a little more complex. Bruce even says it, come the end of the day, the real objective is just to improve or increase the profitability of the client…
“Anyone who focuses on ranking for rankings sake”
By that I assume you mean that real SEO professionals work with businesses that have quality sites and offer a real service / product. Therefore, the real objective in SEO is to promote their business and the ranking is a means-to-an-ends?? If so, I agree. If not, I’m lost. Ranking is important for business - no doubts.
I think the first interview with Bruce got way more press than it deserved. The localization of results and the mix of video, images and news are all old stories. Comscore showed almost a year ago that 16% of the results are Google are universal results. Anyone who focuses on ranking for rankings sake is not a real SEO and we don’t need so call industry authorities to tell us that. Funny how rankings went from “being dead” to “always going to be important” in this interview.
If ranking is dead, how does my Clay expect with the restrictions of say a monitor size, to place which is most relevant on that screen? Even if it was more personalised you can only fit so many listings on the screen, so in that respect you will always have a form of ranking. The internet has restrictions, screen size, number of listings to show per page, etc. Never heard so much crap.
The search engines are always changing, so it is important to keep up with the changes and I think Bruce Clay has a good handle on things. Can’t wait to get the book.
I personally think that LSI will be more and more a true ranking factor and you will continue to see more local results served up as your SERP’s results depending on where you IP tells the search engines where you are located. Look forward to the toolbar! Sounds pretty cool. I’m off to buy SEO for Dummies. Your right, “nobody knows it all!”
If ranking is dead then why are we even talking about it?