When it comes to search engine optimization strategy, there are basically two camps – those who view search engines as adversaries to be conquered at any cost and those who regard search engines as partners in their online marketing efforts. Long-time readers of my articles probably already have a good idea of which camp I fall into; however, I believe both approaches can be effective optimization methods. Adversarial Optimization Methods
Service providers who have this “adversarial” philosophy will tell their prospects that
formulation of a search engine optimization strategy is much like a high-stakes game of chess. It’s an “us vs. them,” “winner-take-all,” and “every man for himself” mentality. It’s also rooted largely in technology – under this philosophy, success is defined as unraveling latest search engine algorithm to find new optimization methods and exploiting its technical aspects for immediate benefit.
The underlying premise of this search engine optimization strategy is that you must use optimization methods that trick search engines into showing a website predominantly in results since site isn’t currently offering attributes that search engines consider valuable. The primary benefits of this approach are that it doesn’t require much work on part of client and that results can be realized more rapidly. These qualities both stem from fact that there isn’t a large amount of additional content needed, nor are there many wholesale changes to make to website when using such optimization methods.
While this is not methodology that I recommend, it is a valid – albeit potentially volatile – search engine optimization strategy.
Partnership Optimization Methods
Those who view search engines as partners have a very different search engine optimization strategy. These service providers embrace idea that attributes and optimization methods that give a website high rankings in search engines are, by and large, same ones that make site more valuable to website visitors and potential customers.
This theory makes sense. Every search engine needs to return results that their users find to be most relevant and useful. If search engine R&D people operated in a vacuum, they would probably find their market share rapidly diminished while they lamented about how “people are stupid”. This means that each of major search engines spend endless research dollars to determine exactly what it is that search engine users find valuable, and each has a high stake in results of research. No search engine marketing or web design firm has resources or motivation to conduct studies of this magnitude. It is, therefore, highly advantageous to use findings of these studies, deduced from common algorithm traits of multiple search engines, to improve your search engine optimization strategy and website.
