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Recently the SEO industry is buzzing around a relatively new term, advanced SEO.
Advanced SEO is not yet clearly defined but many people already seem to agree what it is. My personal impression as to this inherent definition is: Advanced SEO appears to consist of complex web development and analytics tasks.
Now I wonder:
- Is this kind of complex web development and analytics really advanced?
- In what other directions SEO could advance to?
- Does advancing mean evolving or just getting more complicated?
- Why strive for complexity when simplicity is often the best advancement?
- Is advanced SEO just another synonym for SEO 2.0?
While I agree that you need to differentiate between basic SEO or SEO basics and advanced SEO I am not sure the current way the SEO industry is advancing along is the ideal course. When we compare the SEO industry to other industries we’ll notice that there efficiency is key not complexity for it’s own sake.
Also in SEO you can’t automate anymore like you could a few years ago, so advancing more and more into the web development and programming direction is a step back.
While there are new tools which of course have to be programmed relying on automation and programming for SEO reasons can backfire due to the fact that more and more human input is introduced into search results ranking.
So at the end of the day SEO is not only about SEO anymore but about
- content creation
- social networking
- and ultimately public relations
SEO becomes increasingly part of a larger marketing strategy.
Currently SEO is advancing in different directions:
- Complexity (web development, analytics)
- Social Media (networking, public relations where the public actually is)
- Content creation (blogging, writing, “multimedia” like Video)
These directions are very different, but the movements towards them takes place at the same time. While some people concentrate only on one of those, others attempt to cover all of them.
That’s my point: You can’t limit yourself to advanced SEO in the sense complex web development and analytics.
Tracking conversions, ROI is fine but you can’t succeed in the long run if you analyzed your perfect customer without ever talking to him. Using meticulously coded websites that make search engines happy will never be a success strategy if you can’t offer killer content.
In SEO 2.0 often the most simple solutions are the best: Why not socialize with the potential consumer or to find out what he wants instead directly of sifting through website usage data?
Yes, sometimes it’s so easy. Don’t scan me, just ask me want I want. It’s done off line “can I help you?” and you can do it online too. So advanced SEO is about making the target audience visit your site and then making the visitor find what s/he wants. This is advanced SEO or SEO 2.0.
In basic SEO you just want
- to rank
- get found
- or garner huge traffic.
In advanced SEO you make sure the traffic is viewed as people, customers, multipliers.
In SEO 2.0 people out there do not hate SEO, they don’t even notice it because it just perfectly fulfills their wishes. Advanced SEO is not about cool programming skills only, it’s about social skills.
This thing has 9 Comments
Nice definition.
I fully agree and would like to add:
- SEO can not disregard the fundamentals of marketing and sales.
- SEO should be highly incorporated into the overall marketing campaign.
- Branding efforts must be unified.
- Insights gained from key word research, typically only done by SEO’s, should be spread to every part of the organization or ad agency handling the account.
When it comes to SEO I agree there needs to be different levels , there is not a “one size fits all” solution. Is Advanced SEO more about highly advanced tactics or taking SEO to the next level (SEO 2.0)? To me Advanced SEO is more about building a holistic strategy revolving around the entire UX - looking at things like path analysis to better understand visitors and how they consume content… basically SEO 2.0 comes down to what’s next.
I like your article - and I agree with the popular focuses of “internet marketing” but I disagree with the concept of Advanced SEO and here is why….
-SEO is of course becoming more complex as more competitors join the race and algorithms become more complex but it’s still the same game.
-Web development has always been on a trend of more complex technology as technologies improved.
-Social is not a new focus, its always been there with forums, press releases, and boards. Just the new social sites are improved versions.
-Content has been a core focus for years - maybe there is more video and other media content - as technology and improved bandwidth allows for it.
-Also I totally disagree with the idea that basic SEO focuses on traffic and rank compared to advanced with looks at traffic as customers. SEO’s have been promoting brands and conversions since the beginning.
The concept should really be a comparison between good internet marketing pros that are creative and use all resources available to them versus bad SEO’s that don’t invest themselves in their clients goals; not basic versus advanced.
I fully agree that SEO is a lot more than just strategic placement of keywords and getting quality inbound links. It has to take care of marketing and branding aspects also as it is integrated with SEM and internet marketing strategy for any business.
Great post. I agree, advanced SEO is taking it to the next level with social skills…kind of like graduating from high school and moving on to college. Fantastic SEO markup on the page by the way.
Dratewka: very good post :) I’m loving it :) yeah, seo as advanced as it gets, the advantage of it, the roi that follows the advancement, the forward move(ment) that follows the promotion (as in rank :), I guess, this is what ‘advanced seo is about’ :)
I agree, but seo advanced is more about analyzing how google works if you do that or this, is the ability to know what to do to keep the success and when to do it.
Ultimately advanced SEO is simply good SEO. It really comes down to simply taking the time to do the right on page and off page work to improve your sites chances of being found high in the search results. When all’s said and done it’s a matter of quality, more so than quanity.
I feel that a lot of people tend to consider label “gray”/”black” methods as be “advanced” SEO. I’m not sure if I agree with all definitions being applied to SEO, but people do need to learn how to apply SEO so it isn’t in a bubble. Classic SEO (SEO 1.0) is the basics. It should be combined to traditional methods of marketing and branding, in combination with social media and web 2.0.
For me, I see advanced SEO as “testing”. Playing around and learning new tactics beyond, “get links”