The Internet has spawned an entirely new industry of search engine marketers, who attempt to manipulate the results of search engines based on keywords and links. A recent comment thread on one of my favorite blogs showcased the following comment from a fellow reader:
The keyword density argument is very similar to that on reciprocal linking. We are told that this is not of any future value. Only inbound one way links will count.
Next week we could equally be told that keyword plugging of any description is bad for your search engine health.
Why can’t the search engines work purely and simply on a “Quality& Effort” standard then it will be the same as everything else in life. We all will have an equal chance to promote our sites accordingly and be judged on merit.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to market oneself and one’s business on the Internet. First, it isn’t about keyword density. It’s about high value content, but you can’t write high value content without keywords.
You also can’t provide such content without links. Inbound one-way links to your website are quite valuable, especially if they are from websites related in content to yours. Truth is, the search engine algorithms consider hundreds of factors when ranking web pages for certain keywords.
This commenters notion that the search engines currently do not operate on a “quality and effort” standard is entirely false. The problem is too many website owners have figured out what the quality is supposed to be and have tried to game the system through dishonest or false keyword and link play. Google’s answer to this is to offer personalized search and future search engine developments such as latent semantic search prove to fix that problem. Right now, though, search engine marketers are stuck with the system that has been created by Google and its competition. If you want to rank high for your keywords you’ll have to work within the system, or risk being shut out for good.
