WVO is taking over SEO ? Part 1

The Death of Meta Keywords

Is this the end of SEO or just an evolution?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO as we usually say), has been around since the first search engines came to life. However, it seems that today's optimizations are less and less for the search engines, but rather the web visitors. This is the birth of the Web Visitor Optimization (WVO).

Let's review together how all of that happened.

Search engines were acquiring more and more site in their listings and as those grew more and more, certain facts started to appear obvious:

There was a huge amount of sites.
People no longer looked at all the results.
The focus became the few first pages only.
Search engines may have just listed the websites at first as is but as the number of those kept increasing, and as the quality and relevancy of those sites become more and more questionable; in order for them to survive, the search engines had to make a change.

They had to display better quality results on the first pages.

So they started to implement algorithms to do so. People who had their website listed now understood too, the game.

They had to rank in the first pages; this was the birth of SEO.

Experts quickly found out some tricks to enhance their websites and please the search engines (where the term Search Engine Optimization). It was all about feeding the search engine with what it was looking for when defining a quality site.

Over time, the search engines have been modifying their algorithms to counter those modifications and offer the best genuine results they think. Over time, people have been catching up with the search engines by finding new ways to please the search engines, some using ethical ways (white hat) and some using unethical ways (black hat).

For years, it all has been about keyword density, meta tags and others... but less and less... something changed.

The search engines and the webmasters had forgotten something in their never ending battle: The Web Visitors.

Google itself has been and is a pioneer in ever modifying its algorithm now has to include more and more this Web Visitor as a major factor; and thus SEO as we knew it started to change.

Then the Meta Keywords lost their value gradually until nothing.
The keyword density became irrelevant.
It was then the turn of the Meta Description to...
Meta Keywords used to be the key to rank well in search engines as it was the only reference they needed. Realizing how people were manipulating those to publish content sometimes absolutely unrelated, search engines decided that now your Meta Keywords should match your content.

This way helped to screen out a lot of unrelated junk sites, yet again, some malicious people still manage to manipulate the results.

By adding more and more keywords, people started to influence the results again. The response of the search engines wasn't long.

From now on, the search engines wouldn't need the Meta keywords anymore; they'll be smart enough to find them on their own from the content provided. This was the down of Keyword Density.

Google quest in offering more and higher quality content to its users was on the right tracks: to rank, now webmasters would be required to have pages with relevant content.

The Meta Description recently followed the same fate.

But then again, using Keyword Density, many managed to outsmart the search engine, but not for long...

Something else happened... Google made another change in its algorithm. The keyword itself would not be sufficient by itself; it should set in appropriate content.

This measure was to ensure that not only the first pages results would contain content; this content would be related to the search term as a whole, and not just through the keywords.

The SEO specialists now had to write related content with keywords.

Today, Google goes one step further about the keyword density. It is no longer relevant, now having the keyword doesn't carry weight like it used to do, but instead one should use alternate version of the term in ones' content.

Furthermore, trying to insert too many keywords will now get you penalized. One reason behind this algorithm modification was the fact that Google noticed that content pages filled with keyword, even in a content related page, looks odd, and sometimes even difficult to read.

This was hardly a description of "Quality Content" for Google Users. Having more variation of a search term make the content more fluid and natural, hardly something a program can auto generate; therefore forcing the SEO specialist to start to write quality content.

This is the dawn to major changes in SEO. The game is no longer about pleasing the search engine by optimization but by pleasing its users, this is the dawn of what I call Web Visitor Optimization.

Remember, I'm here to help!