For more than a decade, the buzzword for generating web content and various articles to promote a certain product, service or concept necessarily involved SEO. It was the be-all and end-all of websites and blog pages. Everyone from webmasters to system administrators, from professional bloggers to Internet marketers, from freelance writers to web content analysts – everyone wanted a piece of the SEO action.

The success and failure of a website used to depend on it’s SEO content. Search engines, particularly Google, crawled over these websites finding the most apt results for searches made over the Internet. This caused websites to fall all over themselves to incorporate SEO-rich content in order to make a good showing at search results and achieve a higher page ranking compared to their competitors.

In the last several years, freelance and SEO web content writers had a field day churning out thousands upon thousands of SEO-loaded articles and web pages for sites desperate to keep their footing in the competitive world of Internet commerce. Whole sub-industries, both above and underground, started sprouting around this search engine optimization wunderkind. Websites offered tutorials and download-able e-books for a fee. Youtube saw a massive increase in SEO-related how-to videos. The number of podcasts on the subject are yet to be counted. Even paperbacks started cashing in on the deal. After all, as everyone was wont to claim: “SEO is king”.

While SEO was still harnessed to the hot horse, those that rode the bandwagon took advantage of all SEO-ables they could stick their keyword terms and phrases on. From their domain names, all the way to file names, meta description tags, posting signature links on various applicable forums and on their hyperlinks. Some even went as far as putting their keyword phrase on picture captions.

This strategy seemed to work for a while, despite the awkward turn of phrase encountered on web content and web articles whose overzealous use of SEO had rendered their copy a wince-worthy bungling read. But in the rapidly changing landscape of the world wide web, where today’s top players could be the next day’s biggest losers, not even sacred SEO and claiming the web’s highest page rankings could save the day.

Google, that monarch of search engines, in their quest to find only the most search-worthy sites based on relevant content, modified their search and ranking algorithms to weed out websites engaged in SEO “pimping”. Labelling it “keyword spamming,” websites whose content and copy contained too much of this good thing were banned from Google search. Thus did the Internet witness SEO’s fall from grace.

Sites whose content reeked of too much SEO rang Google’s alarm bells, and the search engine’s spam filters culled them out of the search results pages, whether their sites happened to be the most relevant in their content category or not.

Virtually overnight, Google took on the persona of the wicked witch of the world wide web, or at least as far as SEO experts were concerned. But by this time, Google had already established itself as a behemoth among search engines, powered by it’s hold on the world of page rankings. It was kowtow or be pow-pow-ed.

Undaunted, the powers-that-be of thousands of websites worldwide tried to find a way around this new set of rules by employing link building methods to get in the good graces of Google once again, all the while propelling their page rankings up the search stratosphere. Unfortunately, once a good idea gets off the ground, it’s use is maximized to the breaking point. Link exchange sites and link building companies started popping up all over the web offering their services, only to spam other websites with requests for link exchanges. Once again, Google swooped down on the miscreants, and webmasters were back at square one.

Sound link building practices took time and were more labor intensive. Nothing yet invented or thought up came close to raising site popularity and elevating page rankings compared to the wonder that was SEO.

Alas, while SEO lolled about in the trenches, it was not so soon forgotten. Slowly it arose like a phoenix out of the ashes of its carcass. Website owners realized that the only way to get SEO back into it’s feet and propel their pages up the rankings once more was be sneakier about sneaking SEO in.

Taking out all of a site’s keywords and key phrases from all the obvious places where Google was likely to send its SEO sentries to crawl over seemed a likely idea to adopt. The fundamental principle behind the concept is simple: too much of a good thing is bad for your website, at least in Google’s opinion. Keeping it simple became the new buzzword, by not worrying about whether to include a keyword-rich H1 heading, or spraying the first paragraph of one’s homepage content with a heavy load of key phrases. In short, not being so obvious about where a website is SEO-ified will help avoid being “handcuffed” by the Google spam filter police for keyword spamming violations.

Purveyors of SEO and all other SEO followers continue to be puzzled by all this stealth. Where before it was “the more, the merrier”, these days it’s fashion forward with “less is more”. There is no hard and fast rule on applying SEO to web content, nor is there a specific science about where and how to integrate keywords and key phrases into a website’s copy. The absence of the requisite “e=mc2” or “if x = y and y = z, then x = z” type of formulas for optimal SEO use to achieve page rank glory isn’t easily comprehended, especially by that sector of the web community that is so used to thinking that success lies in equations.

The answer lies in being creative about SEO-ifying a site. This means web content and copy should read like well-written, well thought-out pieces, and not like ramblings from the mind of an obsessive-compulsive paranoid schizophrenic intent on echoing all sentiments in five sentences out of ten, you know, for just in case they forgot.

Web content and copy that will make readers wince at the repetitive use of keywords, key phrases, and all variations thereof on all possible places on a site will ring those spam filter warning bells, as well.

While SEO may have been king, or perhaps still will be if it isn’t so much used and abused, there isn’t a rulebook to read and a set of specifications to follow. The best way to make use of SEO is to camouflage it well by spreading keywords and phrases all across a site’s page. Not only will equal distribution read so much better, it will come across as totally legit to the web crawlers too.

The only rule of thumb is, a site that’s been SEO’d the right way won’t look like SEO has been anywhere near it at all. Well, at least to a non-SEO expert anyway. And this is just about the most wonderful gift a website owner can give to a website, and to the business run by that website, as well – all in all, a powerful investment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.