Yes, Virginia, the Big Guys Do SEO
When you get the kind of experienced, knowledgeable and sometimes opinionated people together that the SEO Chat forum attracts, discussions can get a little contentious. But that just adds to the fun, especially when trying to unravel some of the mysteries of the field. Recently, one of our posters wondered why, if SEO is so powerful, the big names the Microsofts, Amazons, Nokias, Facebooks, Googles, etc. didn't seem to do SEO campaigns, or at least didn't seem to need SEO to get to their dominant position. Does this mean that SEO is really weak, especially when compared with, say social media marketing?
You can imagine what kind of response that attracted! It even called
into question what, exactly, is search engine optimization. Respected
forum member ClickyB pointed out that All of the sites you mention
have something unique/highly valuable to offer and/or are world leaders
in their fields. They all practice SEO of a sort - linkbait. He went
on to say that that kind of branding negates the need for other forms
of SEO (because it will result in huge numbers of 'free backlinks').
Another poster pointed out that Amazon targets long tail keywords
and gets incoming links through widgets and APIs, while social networks
like Facebook are pretty viral. The view seems to be that if you
offer a unique and valuable product or service, you don't have to
run deliberate SEO campaigns, or do you? Looked at another way,
anything you do to cause people to link to your site is SEO in which
case, even brand-building that doesn't take place online, such as
including your site's URL in a billboard ad, could be thought of
as SEO.
Doing SEO for a large company with a big brand name, one poster
revealed, can be very different from doing it for a smaller company.
The goal is different. This poster said that he works as an SEO
for a company with a huge brand name, and my job isn't to make the
website rank for its keywords, [it]is to ensure that all the backend
developments that they do adhere to Google's Quality Guidelines
and the site has all the basic SEO elements.
Still, how did the big guys get to this position, and how can you duplicate it? One thoughtful poster gave a list. First, they promoted themselves as authority sites targeting a specific niche (selling books online for Amazon, for example). Then they made sure they were linkable that is, they offered widgets, APIs, or valuable information that cannot be found somewhere else (think Microsoft). They provided a better user experience than their competitors (think Facebook vs. Myspace). They offered incentives to bring in new users and links. And above all, they continued to grow, which makes Google happy.
Hopefully this list will give you some ideas you can use for your web site. Good luck!
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