Is the art of SEO dead in 2013?

Many forums have been awash with webmasters complaining of lower traffic arising from the latest Google algorithms and their various incarnations, namely Panda, Penguin and what we refer to as the Keyword Domain name devaluation algorithm. Google has been blamed of ensnaring more and more websites with every new update. So the question is, is SEO really dead?

Anecdotal evidence across a number of websites since the original Panda algorithm hit in February 2011 seems to bear testimony to the troubles that webmasters have been facing Analytics data showing losses of over 50% of Google organic traffic is not uncommon for websites that have been hit by any number of these algorithm updates.

A brief overview of a number of the sites that have lost traffic leads to an easy conclusion – whilst SEO is certainly not dead, SEO tricks and shortcuts are definitely on life support – and now produce more harm than they do good. So for many of the webmasters that were relying on tricks and shortcuts to gain better rankings, well, for them the SEO game is over. But then again, that was always going to be a short lived ranking situation anyways, and for those webmasters, the same tactics for SEO would be considered dead in 2013.

In fact, it’s likely that the very things that helped webmasters before are the ones that are hurting them now and will continue to hurt them into 2013. But even for those of us who have always used best SEO practices, some things have changed.

Today, and for the foreseeable future, SEO is much less about optimizing for specific keywords, and much more about technical issues, social signals, and the overall trustworthiness of a company and its website.

Here is a list compiled of the most prolific problems that had likely contributed to the huge losses of organic Google traffic and the subsequent loss in conversions and sales that so many companies have been facing:

• Duplicate content
• Footer links
• Poor writing
• Poor presentation
• Keyword stuffing
• Doorways
• Auto anchor text
• Spammy comments
• Low-quality pages
• Content below fold
• Technical problems
• No content
• Merry-go-rounds
• Unnatural links
• Semi-hidden text
• Rich snippet abuse
• Trustworthiness

See if you are guilty of any of these types of quick ranking strategies, and then read our next post on what strategies to use in 2013 to get better Google rankings.