This is a POV on the state of search engine optimization (SEO), written in response to Fran Molloy’s article “Is SEO dead?” which ran on 16 September 2009 in Nett Magazine.

“Search engines are now so smart, that there’s no need for specialist SEO copywriting.”
- Glenn Murray, specialist SEO copywriter

I agree with a few of the fundamentals here, especially 1) SEO as a science goes far beyond the keywords appearing on the screen, and 2) the point at the end that picking keywords is an essential part of the process.  The robustness of this research foundation is often the best predictor of SEO success.

The notion of “specialist SEO copywriting” is indeed pretty baseless… as the search engines increase in sophistication, all they are doing is modeling human behavior with increasing levels of complexity and accuracy.  This inevitably means that mechanical tactics such as doubling the incidence of keywords on the page have, at best, a neutral effect on a site’s SEO profile.  They could also serve as a detriment, which we’ve been seeing for years now in the form of keyword stuffing penalties.  So in effect, with every passing day, “specialist SEO copywriting” looks more and more like just plain copywriting.

It’s for these reasons that on-page tactical SEO only gets real attention at the beginning of a project (something we alluded to in the post “Dinosaurs, Dodo Birds and Tactical SEO”).  Once the best practices are baked into the content development workflows and/or CMS, these tactics diminish in importance, deferring to the long-term editorial strategy which is so important for maintaining strong visibility in search over the long haul.

About Paul Burani

Paul Burani - Partner, Web Liquid Group. Connect with me on Google+

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