[Closed] Is SEO still important or It is just a formality these days!

I think link building is still relevant. It's no longer about building as many links as possible. Think quality, not quantity, a few links with high domain authority are worth far more than several low-quality links. Guest posting is still one of the best SEO strategies in 2016. Creating a great piece of content and publishing it to other related websites will not just help you gain high-quality links, but it also help you drive tons of traffic to your site.

Its not going to end, Each and every websites needs basic onpage optimization to make search engine friendly. So now days we have to do more onpage things to get index your web page.

If you go for off page , content is the king.

SEO is still important, but due to other practitioners in the field that are not implementing the right and quality method to optimize the site pages for the users they are only ruining the site's reputation in the web.

Hi Sandeep, nice question. I think SEO techniques like keyword stuffing work no more. I have seen some fiverr gigs going as far as providing 1000 back links in a day! I don't know how they do it, but they also stand no value now. As other warriors have mentioned, the only quality SEO you can do on your web is getting QUALITY back links. Landing your guests posts on famous blogs and then waiting for the magic to happen!

Moreover, this world is a small place. If you produce quality content, people WILL notice you. And they will link you back. Just go on producing quality content, promote it on whatever means you have, and google will start admiring you.
Thanks
Junaid

Now a days SEO is more important than ever and its necessary for each and every web master to understanding the real meaning of seo. If you have a websites or blogs, SEO helps in your business to grow and chance to more business ideas.

most SEOs would agree that the following are all important ranking factors:

- Keyword usage
- Site structure
- Site speed
- Time spent on site
- Number of inbound links
- Quality of inbound links

Maybe those factors will change. But I think as far as search engine will be online SEO will still be very important.

SEO is not dead but it is overcome with several new methods, in the place of thin link new techniques of creating links are taken place.
The technique of thick link is taken place, the link is created by posting quality content which give any messages or some information relevant to your product, brand or website. Now quality is more important than quantity because one quality link is more beneficial than twenty thin links.

Think about the last time you used the Internet. How did you find what you were looking for? How did you find this exact page? I’d be willing to bet it was a search engine.
So how can you connect with the users who could potentially become your customers? The best way is with SEO. Even though it requires time and energy, it’s worth doing—and doing right.

Black Hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO tactics are aggressive, unauthentic, fake and will get your site banned if search engines discover that you’ve been using them.

Black Hat SEO Tactics include keyword stuffing your content, link manipulation (buying links) and fake guest blogging.

Black Hat SEO isn’t a formality, it isn’t important, and in no way at all should you consider using black hat methods of SEO on your site.

White hat SEO
White hat SEO refers to practices which optimise your site to improve your search engine results while keeping the content honest and truthful. This involves implementing strategies which provide quality, genuine content such as web copy, relevant blogs, keyword-focussed meta tags etc

Not only are white hat SEO techniques encouraged by search engines such as Google; NOT using them can see you banned from the search engines! There is SO much content out there these days that if you’re not making an effort to actively optimise your site, you will be punished by the Google Gods!

The short answer is that yes, SEO is extremely important if you want people to be able to find your site via a search engine.

The long answer is that there are so many methods of SEO, that you have to be careful not to use the wrong ones! If you are found to be putting unauthentic SEO methods in place, then you will be penalised for it.

Do continue with a genuine white hat SEO strategy, but tread carefully if you’re planning on paying someone to implement any such tactics.

SEO at its core is the art and science of making high quality articles easier to find on search engines. The key point becoming quality content that helps customers answer questions that lead to purchase or some other business outcome. Most of Google algorithm updates are planned to reward good content and punish spam. Search is still strong and still the leading referrer to most web sites. Getting people to the right pages straight off the bat is going to be important as long as the internet is used to search.

Seo is still important..Companies and businesses are spending hundreds of dollars to create attractive or flashy websites in order to engage customers attention but these designs have no value over search engines (until you type full web domain).

According to a survey, it has been noted that more than 80 percent of the customer or visitors make use of different websites by using these search engines. In simple words, the majority of traffic on a website comes through search engines. For analyzing traffic, Google Analytics is also used; it describes the analytics of any websites traffic of visitors. This particular tool is also used by different SEO users for analyzing the traffic.

Today, virtually every business has its own space over the internet and it does not matter whatever the size of a business is. Most of these business owners are successful in getting customer attention through marketing over the internet. There are a large number of people who use to invest in online marketing and earn a profit and for this SEO are widely used by them for improving their business standards and increase the number of user visits to these particular online marketing websites.

SEO is still one of the best tools for boosting online business profit and is nowadays widely used by a large number of people.

Google includes over 200 ranking algorithms, nobody knows the exact number, except for them of course. You can't say that content isn't working, that can't be right. It's possible for some areas with lower competition, but in general the ones with higher rankings are in top. What works and what doesn't depends top competitors - review their statistics, their website - what are they focused on. That should be your area of focus too. I usually do the following: :

1. Competitor analysis is the first report which is to be done prior to starting the promotion:
1.1. Domain requests in Google Adwords;
1.2. Unique adverts in Google Adwords;
1.3. Domain requests in Google search results
1.4. URL visibility in Google search results and its comparison in TOP 10
1.5. Competitors for the domain in search results

2. Competitor domain requests
2.1. Calls to action
2.2. Contacts
2.3. Warnings and tips
2.4. Goods on the site. Design according to rules and standards.
2.5. Payment methods
2.6. Quality of goods description and their photographs
2.7. Reviews, rating, comments
2.8. Special offers
2.9. Flypage. Convenience and readability
2.10. Option to cancel all actions
2.11. Links to social network pages

3. Content composition
3.1. Headlines
3.2. Body content
3.3. Links in text
3.4. Styles and colors
3.5. Separation with tags
3.6. Readability
3.7. Capital letters
3.8. Text alignment
3.9. Font size
3.10. Font style

4. Information architecture
4.1. Home page;
4.2. Menu name and categories;
4.3. Number of buttons/links in menu;
4.4. Search on the site;
4.5. Nesting Level;
4.6. Friendly URL;

5. Site design
5.1. Essential information is placed in the first window of vertical scroll;
5.2. Good text and background contrast;
5.3. Style according to the theme;
5.4. Appropriate colors;
5.5. Site structure;
5.6. Whitespace.

6. Identification
6.1. Company logotype
6.2. Slogan
6.3. Home page recognition and its readability.
6.4. Favicon
6.5. Pages “About” and “Contacts”.

You have up to 7 seconds to convince the customer that your site is the one they need. People make decisions whether to stay or leave the site judging by the site's appearance and convenience to use it. Only after that they decide whether to trust the site.

7. Site accessibility
7.1. Custom page with 404 error
7.2. Text areas as images
7.3. Clickable logotype
7.4. All modules and forms. Efficiency.

Proper Site Usability decreases the number of customer rejections and increases sales on the site. For that reason, one should not neglect such vital aspect as Site Usability. Make your site most convenient and accessible to every user. In return you will obtain growth and trustworthiness of your site.

SEO is still very important.You can get better results with effective back-link techniques and also with unique and quality content.

In my opinion, I understand where your coming from, but seo IS important. Content is STILL a part of seo. Websites look at your content to determine what your article is about... But backlinks from high authority sites like social media play a great influence on your contents traffic and rank. You can still rank with 0 comments.

You just have to keep learning about seo and never give up.

Here is a tip I recently learned that has ranked some articles in the past 2 months.

By using social media sites to re purpose your content, then collecting those post links and sharing them all over using quality seo community tools...

You can easily rank for low competition keywords.

I think this is a great topic to discuss. In short there are 3 parts of your seo.

1 Content
2 On page seo
3 Off page seo

All are equally important and can't be ignored.

Hope this help add value to the thread.

Have a wonderful day.

Now a days SEO is more important than ever because every day 100's of websites are coming to live. If you stand on top of these you should do seo for your business online presence.

SEO is still important for business. Every business first prefers to perform SEO. If you know all the tactics and rules of SEO then definitely you will reach to the top of SEO.

Link building is still relevant. It is one of the most challenging parts of implementing SEO and it is essential to the success of a website. Link building is an art. You have to be creative in building links to your site.

SEO will never end anytime and it is the process which will be needed at every instant whenever a new website launch in the online market. It helps to boost the awareness of a website and it is the requirement of every startup or even of an established one as well.

I am still confused about SEO. I think it is going down due to lack of link opportunities and most of SEO's still using old methods. Now only content works and it is worthy for SEO activities. Now old link building methods are dead or not work more and most of SEO's moving to other profession. I think SEO is going to be end and we must find other ways for online market.

Learning SEO or becoming SEO obsessed itself is not necessary, unless if you want to be an SEO expert or open a company providing SEO services. If you have other product, or services, it is just optional. However, keep in mind that content is still important for your ranking and conversion. As a business owner, why not try other pay per performance models, such as JV, offline promotion and so on.

This is not going end as long as search engine exist.

I Think SEO still important, especially for onpage..because without SEO I think it's very difficukt to up our webs

In my opinion, quality backlinks should be put in high PR sites that have same niche with the links and get a lot of traffic.

Being found on the internet is the same as a prime spot in a city for a retailer, the better the position the more traffic you will receive. There are three ways: 1) you use the same technology as Google with people as smart as their employees; 2) you write more content than your competitors which require more time or more capital to hire writers; 3) you use unethical methods.

With 3) you are presuming you are smarter than Google, that won't happen and they will punish you. 2) you only have so many hours in the day, if you are selling one product it's easier but then everyone's doing the same, can you produce better and more interesting content than your best competitor. 1) very few have access to this, you need these and above https://www.nexcess.net/wordpress/enterprise-hosting - minimum 200 or 300 versions.

You are fighting this simple graph!


If you combine 1) and 2) you automatically go to the top, that's what we do as they have just launched a new affiliate hosting system which provides 1) but at 1/10th the cost, it's designed for ranking and not visitor volume, affiliates do not need eCommerce traffic levels. Then we go to Zerys or write the content ourselves and it's indexed in 48hrs! Nothing can touch it.

Web development is another key factor that decides the fate of the website. Originally websites were quite simple looking initially in the absence of enhanced technology, now a day’s a web-site needs to not only look great but also offer greater degree of functionalities and a lot of features. If it is for example an SEO, the product or services listings as well as their description and cart feature are all provided in an entirely mesmerizing way that the visitor feels compelled to purchase the product or opt in to the services.

Hi Sandeep7, yes I agree Seo is over for all the SEO blenders, that have worked with dirty short working tricks in the past. But if you understand SEO really and don´t spot learning and testing, trial and error, Your´re the winner. SEO grows more and more, but you must know what you´re doing. AND YES its not enough to change your sign from advertising agency to SEO agency. You must know from what you speak and must give advantage to your clients! If you can do this, SEO is not over and you must not search another job!

I feel SEO is more of a foundation for a website than the marketing engine it once was. It is important Google can read your website and know what is there when it sends visitors.

Offpage SEO just isn't what it used to be. In my opinion there are no "Quality" back links available because all quality website are no follow.

This is my first time reading SEO as a formality. To me SEO is vital in any way. It's a standard. When you want to make a site and be successful, SEO is your very foundation. With or without budget, SEO can help you get to the top.

SEO will always be an important component in raising your site's visibility. Optimize your website for your target keywords and create high quality content around these keywords to gain quality backlinks. Continue to create content and share relevant information and over time you will be rewarded.

Yes and no...

I am NOT an expert on this, so please don't take what I say to mean anything other than just one person's opinion. About a few months ago, I realized we need some serious help on our inbound marketing work. Just not enough inquiries, not enough traffic, nothing going on. We have in the past paid an SEO company $1,000/month to help us and after about 15 months, we lost rankings, we didn't see any significant results at all, really not even ONE qualified lead that said they found us on Google in that entire time. Our referrals and outbound efforts pretty much kept us going. Some businesses depend on inbound marketing, but ours is survivable without as much, except it's just hard to realize any growth.

Long story short, I decided I need to go the SEO path again after maybe a year and a half without doing much work to the site. I set about reading as many articles as I could, dozens per day, for weeks, doing tons of research on every technique, every tip and trick, and whatever I could find. I came to one conclusion at the end of this that really surprised me: SEO is a complete waste of money for us. The reality is that a company, especially one with an office, charging $1,000 per month is probably making $500 "profit" off that amount, with some going to the office space, insurance, business expenses, etc. If you are lucky, $500 of the remaining amount goes to helping you, which means staff hours, creating content, etc. That's all pointless unless you have a ton of money to spend on SEO and are too busy to do any of it yourself.

What I realized is that every site, including this forum and the replies here, keep saying the same thing: Content is king. Build up your blog. Make infographics. Share on social media. Improve your home page, take a look at all of your pages and make sure they work together, create targeted landing pages. Maybe all of this *sounds* like you indeed *do* need an SEO company, but this is basic stuff. I already had a guy to help me with Website work, so we started with taking our page speed from a pathetic 30 or so up to 70 or 80 by turning off some plugins, redoing some elements, and making sure that our site loads way faster. That was probably hurting us a lot, too.

Then I started a blog plan and came up with a bunch of ideas, sat down, and started writing articles. Now I have a queue of articles through August with 12 more ready to be added to the back end. I have no clue if those blog entries will help our business overall, but it's pretty much the same thing that any SEO company would do only I'm a professional (and published) writer who understands my own business; they're not. Poor writing drives me crazy and I don't really want someone else blogging on my site if they don't know how to write properly.

I think the death of the SEO company is when people realize there is no magic bullet, which I was honestly hoping there would be. Just like anyone else, we all want that. It's why diet pills are so profitable and why everyone jumps aboard the newest fad. I've always subscribed to working hard for my results, which means I do the research and know what supplements work (creatine, probably HMB) and how to maximize my fitness potential. I guess I was hoping in the world of digital marketing, there was some easy shortcut that I could just take to get the rankings. What I soon realized is it's like anything else in life -- hard work pays off, but you have to be patient. Every site said the same thing. Create great content, share the content, and work hard day in and day out for your rankings.

I will say, though I've just recently taken command and control of the site again after neglecting it for a while, there are limited positive results already. A blog I wrote managed to get a 4th place ranking for a solid keyword phrase just two days after I posted it. Our site went from the 17th page for a critical phrase (useless) to the 9th, 11th, or 12th, depending on the day I check. That still sucks, and either way, I doubt we get any inquiries from that, but it's progress.