Many people believe that SEO is dead but others maintain that it has instead evolved. Now there are two types of SEO practitioners: those who believe in this evolution and have adjusted and evolved with it, and those who cling to the past using tricks to take advantage of Google’s weaknesses with SEO. With Google Panda sites with poor content no longer rise to the top. Sites must earn good search visibility through good content and not just through optimization. It is a better use of resources and time to create good content rather than trying to work around Google’s algorithm.
In the past SEO focused on very specific ways to configure your website for search visibility, like an internet librarian making sure the search engines would put the sites where they should be. SEO focused on the technical: SEO programming, keywords, on-page sculpting, content farms, and link building among other things.
Nowadays, there are definitely ways to get the basics right, but a lot of it is about marketing, public relations and content publishing. Content should be useful, helpful and entertaining, optimized for the user and not the search engine. This will engage the audience in 2-way communication through such things as social media and online PR, earning attention in the marketplace.
Some points to consider when creating content:
The most important thing is to create great content, and create as much of it as consistently as possible. This will make people want to download your content, share it, comment on it, and link to it. It pays to remember not to optimize for search engines – optimize for people. After all, they are the ones reading your content and ultimately upping your visibility.
Source: Social Media Today