B2B Markeplace

There comes a moment in any professional area when a commentator creates an item predicting the end of a particular strategy. It was only a matter of time before a search marketing consultant decided to ask the wider community whether search engine optimisation was dying. From the reactions to that recent piece, it appears to be a question asked and dismissed frequently. As with many other skills in computing that have apparently been unwanted for years but are still in use, search engine optimisation continues to be a worthwhile strategy.

There is an argument that says that trying to increase your organic search engine positioning is a pointless exercise, because the social services such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming the dominant services in most user’s lives and the conventional search facilities are redundant. This is overstating the significance of the social services and does not fully take into consideration how the social services are used.

As long as there have been search facilities there have been dedicated search optimization consultants creating ways of raising the organic search engine positioning of a website. As the algorithms of the search facilities have developed and become more clever, then the search optimization skillshave also developed. The application of some on-page strategies such as keyword saturation no longer have the effect on a page’s listing that they did, so other ideas come in to use. This could include making greater effort in developing an elevated reputation of the website through accumulation of backlinks from trustworthy websites.

It has been suggested that social service search will become more important, but it is difficult to see a commercial purpose for this. It would be possible to ask other users for an opinion on a particular product, but how long would it take to gather those opinions, and how many would a searcher trust? Surely a conventional search platform would supply a broad spectrum of information for a given search term than searching for social comment?

The social services are now at a point where they need to generate income, but without alienating their supporters. The way to do this has to be some form of bought advertising, probably personalised based on a user’s profile, and this is raising concerns about privacy. There is also a feeling that if a network such as Facebook becomes more commercial, it will lose customers. When it comes to commerce, those users will go back to the conventional search facilities, where a website that is well optimized can always be found.

If you choose to promote your company through pay-per-click methods, there are many considerations. There is the choice of location of the advertisement. The content of the advert need to be thought about – what message are you trying to impart? By using search optimization to increase the organic search engine positioning, you can promote many services on your website for a long time at the same time and for a lower cost than other types of media.

The social services may becoming more important in many users’ lives, but the conventional search facilities carry on. search engine optimisation still has a major part to play as a cost effective publicity tool, changing as the search facilities also change.