I hated the term “SEO” from the very beginning, the reason is very simple, because it is abbreviated from “search engine optimization”, that is, to optimize around search engines such as Google, Bing, and Baidu.
But this statement itself is unhealthy, as if we have become the licking dog of the search engine… If you use “SEO” as the cornerstone of your entire knowledge system, you are doomed to fail in the future.
So if you want to establish a correct SEO system and want your website to get a steady stream of traffic, you must be absolutely correct in the most fundamental place, that is, the understanding of “SEO”, otherwise there will be problems.
In this article, I will express my views with you around the following outline:
Our relationship with SEO
In fact, we are the content providers of search engines. Without our content, search engines would not be able to grow and develop. We and search engines have a mutually beneficial and symbiotic relationship.
I like to call my work “SIO”, which is “search intent optimization”, search intent optimization, this is what I have been doing.
So why over the years, many in the industry have said that SEO is dead? Because “SEO”, which represents the technical school, is gradually ineffective. In the past, it was possible to quickly get Google rankings by cheating, but now it doesn’t work. Google uses artificial intelligence ( SEJ once published an article about Rank Brain) method can identify cheating very quickly, and confronting Google is equivalent to courting death.
Even if you can improve your ranking by cheating for a while, but Google’s algorithm upgrades N times a day, there will always be an update that will suppress you, so SEO in a narrow sense is really dead.
However, “SIO”, which represents the content school, is on the rise. I see that more and more foreign counterparts have put most of their energy on content production.
Such as Brain, such as Neiletc., are using their own influence to promote content marketing instead of various complicated technologies, which excites me because it makes my work more meaningful.
Where does SEO end?
The job of a search engine is very simple, it is to match “content” with “search intent”.
I hope to see this scene one day in my lifetime:
All webmasters no longer need to focus on in-site optimization. Google uses AI algorithms to automatically collect website content, automatically generate the most appropriate title and description, and automatically present the most appropriate results to those who need them most. Full automation at the content collection level, to achieve thousands of faces in content push.
To put it bluntly, search engines can present the most suitable content directly to the people who need it most.
Now there are vague signs of this. For example, when people from different countries search for the same word, they get completely different content. People with different shopping habits get different results when they search for the same product name. This is “thousands of people, thousands of faces”. prototype.
Moreover, as the mobile Internet develops further, voice search will inevitably become more popular, and will eventually keep pace with text search. To be honest, I always ask Siri questions directly by voice, such as:
- “Hey Siri, what’s the weather like in Nanjing today?”
- “Hey Siri, who is Joe Hisaishi?”
- “Hey Siri, check the timetable of the Nanjing-Shanghai high-speed train”
For questions like this, Siri can usually tell me the answer directly. If the question is more complicated, Siri will find the answer in the Safari browser, and then let me search manually.
I think, if it is a foreign country, more people will not ask questions to Siri, but ask questions to Google, right? A friend of mine (Wang Sheng) from the United States told me that when four or five-year-old children in the United States have problems, they always say ” Google now!“, use voice to find the answer from Google.
To do this, Google is bound to put a lot of energy into matching “search intent” and “content”, and it will broadcast the most appropriate content directly through voice instead of presenting it through ranking.
The “rich snippets” that Google did a long time agoIn fact, this trend is revealed. For example, when I searched for “Beijing time”, the Google search results page looked like this:
When I search for “Who is Maxwell?”, the following results appear:
Is it a bit like voice search? Query questions, get the results directly on the search results page, instead of clicking in to get the results.
There is only one (or one set) of correct answers in everyone’s mind. The more Google evolves, the more it will understand you. The answer you want has already been thought of before searching.
In fact, it’s scary to think about it carefully, because the final form of Google is like “Skynet” in The Matrix, and it’s also very similar to Yuval Harari, the author of “A Brief History of Tomorrow “Described as “higher life forms”.
It is mentioned in “A Brief History of Tomorrow” that there will be a new religion in the future. Everyone in the religion believes in data, and everyone is sincerely in awe of the higher life forms composed of data… I guess I am about to join the religion haha, in the future If there is a “data religion”, I think I will become a believer.
Why Traditional SEO Doesn’t Work
So in order to speed up the evolution of higher life forms and get a better ranking, the smartest way must be “Dance with Google” instead of “Fight with Google”.
In the past, most of the work of SEO was in “Fight with Google”. Let me give you random examples, such as using clocking to hide a lot of text on the page. For example, use PBN (Private Blog Network)The means to do blog station group…
The purpose of these methods is to let Google rank a piece of content that is not worth ranking on the first page to the first page, but this violates Google’s principles and disrupts Google’s order.
Just imagine a scenario:
A certain medical company A wrote an inappropriate blog on its website. The content of the blog was how to treat cancer, but all the suggestions in it were unverified and risky.
This medical company used cheating methods to boost its ranking to the first page of Google. At this time, in a certain corner of the world, Xiao Ming, who was still in the early stage of cancer, found the article of A through Google, and followed the suggestions in it to prevent the spread of cancer cells. .
As a result, Xiao Ming died.
At this time, Xiao Ming’s family members jumped out to criticize Google. This incident caused an uproar. Thousands of people in various countries jumped out to boycott Google. “fuck Google off” became a buzzword all over the world…
Don’t think it’s impossible, Baidu’s Wei Zexi incident, Isn’t it a living case? In the past, Baidu was very beautiful, but after the Wei Zexi incident, it was so miserable.
Of course, Google will never allow the “Wei Zexi Incident” to appear on its own territory, so from a long time ago, when it included and ranked “YMYL (Your money your life)”Be extremely cautious when viewing pages.
So if you still think about how to use technical means to fight against Google, to “Fight with Google”, you will end up bad in the end.
The most correct SEO method
The smartest way is to follow Google. You start from its essence and its principles. Everything you do is in line with Google’s logic and helps Google achieve its goals. Google will never be able to punish a man who supports it.
As mentioned before, Google’s working principle is to “match the search intent with the most appropriate content”, so as long as we optimize around the user’s search intent, we are helping Google achieve its goal.
What is search intent? It’s a long story…let me make it short.
The so-called search intent is actually the real intention behind the keyword (or search query). For example, when I search for “Beijing Time”, my intention is to understand the Beijing time at this moment. For example, I search for “Who is Maxwell? “, my intention was to get to know Maxwell.
Sometimes search intent and keywords are not very directly related. You have to figure out the real search intent behind each keyword, which is especially like your girlfriend’s WeChat.
For example, when your girlfriend comes to you, you say you are playing games, and when your girlfriend replies “Okay, then you can continue playing”, her real intention is not to let you continue playing, but to tell you to close it immediately The game is going to find her, and let you prove with your actions that she is a hundred times more important than the game.
So to do a good job in SEO (I call it SIO), the most important thing is to understand the real search intent behind each keyword or search phrase. As long as the understanding is in place, we can write the most in line with this search intent based on this search intent. Intent content, let Google match our content with search intent.
To sum up, SEO, which represents technology, is indeed dead, and it will die more and more thoroughly in the future. It is impossible to lift the coffin and cheat corpses, but “SIO”, which represents content marketing, has gained new life, no matter for search engines. Speaking, or for users who use search engines, the rise of SIO is a great thing.
