SEO, as we knew it, does not exist anymore. Last week, Paul Boag wrote an interesting piece in Smashing Magazine explaining why companies should no longer spend money on third-party SEO companies. The article was followed by a heated discussion and Paul had to write another post explaining his take on the necessity of SEO companies. Paul Boag pointed out:

If you hire a SEO company to improve your placement and you measure their worth on the basis of how high they get you in the rankings, then you are out of line with what Google is trying to achieve. Your primary objective should be better content, not higher rankings.

(via SmashingMagazine)

Suddenly, after all those Zoofixations of Google (yes, I am referring to Panda, Penguin bla bla algorithm changes), informative and useful content took the crown. Everyone seems to be so obsessed with ‘content marketing’. Jason DeMers wrote an article on Huffington on the same topic; entitled ‘The New Era of SEO: Content Strategy’. I can see that marketers are embracing this as a paradigm shift. I am, in no way, resisting this change. However, this scenario somehow reminds me of the time when people were equally excited about link building. That phase has gone. Again, I am not implying that content marketing will have a short life span as well. Indeed, I think content marketing is here to stay for long and we will witness its rapid evolution in coming years. Continue reading →