One question that many bloggers ask is whether or not search engine optimization is becoming a harder business. It is a perfectly valid question, since most search engines have algorithms so advance that many of the SEO experts have no clue how to optimize for them using white hat techniques, therefore they play the guessing game. Sadly, the spam sites are to blame. If they didn’t exist, getting top rankings for your chosen keyword/phrase would be much easier. So, is SEO really becoming harder? The answer is both yes and no.
In recent years many of the general markets have become so saturated with blogs and sites that it is impossible to get high rankings. Luckily there are niches. Now, what niches are and how to use them is a completely different topic, so I will only briefly talk about it here. Niches are basically small section of a market.
Lets use “computer” as an example. A search in Google shows that there are 48,400,000 results for “computer”. That is far too many to optimize for, especially since the top 50 results are computer manufactures, software developers, and retail chains. No matter what, it would be nearly impossible to get top rankings for that keyword. So, why not take apart the computer market and optimize for smaller niches? So, instead of computer you could use “apple computer”. Google now shows 203,000,000 results. Whoops, its going opposite!
Not quite, “apple computer” is also far too general a phrase. So now lets use “apple computer macbook”. The results now show 2,330,000 pages, this is much more manageable than 20+ million pages. So as you can see, niching makes all the difference. You can even go all the way down to the model numbers if you want.
So, back to the main question, is SEO harder? It isn’t in the sense that you can still get high rankings by using simple SEO techniques (like keyword niching). However, having to use more SEO techniques can also be quite bothersome at times, which is why SEO is also becoming harder.
Back in the days of 2002, the web was much smaller. In fact, by some estimates, the number of domain names was roughly 1/3 of what it is today. Back then you wouldn’t have to do much SEO to get high Google rankings. Back in the day I used to post HTML tutorials on this site. It was ranked around #20 for “Beginner HTML Tutorials”, even though I had no clue what SEO was. But sadly the Internet reexploded (first explosion was in the 90’s, obviously) and the number of spam sites greatly increased. Google and Yahoo had to devise new ways of fighting spam. So they came up with ultra-advanced ranking algorithms, which make it much harder to start a new site and get good ranks.
This is one reason why I wouldn’t be surprised to see human-edited search engines popping up more often. By human-edited I mean, when you submit your site a person actually visits the site and checks it for spammyness (sorry, I like inventing words). If that were to happen, search engine optimization would change, and might become easy once again.
Luckily (or unluckily for newer sites), modern algorithms take into account the value of your site. If your site is old and has lots of backlinks, you will have an easy time with SEO. If your site is new and doesn’t have many backlinks, you will have to fight for every ounce of that oh so sweet page rank juice.
Once you know the basics of SEO, it is pretty easy, however. It is only the initial launch of a website and getting good search rankings that is hard.
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