When it comes to writing optimized content, there are a number of resources and experts worth consulting. One of the more known being Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com (and Search Creative). Last Thursday, Mike and I had the opportunity to speak with Jill to get her opinions on a number of topics like content optimization and her impression of this year’s conference.
We asked Jill about her thoughts on the theme of this particular conference. As SES progressed, Mike and I noticed developing quality content was seemingly being emphasized over the acquisition of links purely for ranking reasons. While Jill felt quality content was essential, she wasn’t quite as ready to discount links. Jill cited the four sessions devoted to linking strategies as evidence. However, she also added, “they (search engines) are trying to get people to understand it’s not just any content, it’s quality content.”
In the various sessions, I noticed that the speakers emphasized quality content would have an easier time of attracting links, especially during the link Q and A, which was attending by engineers from the Google, Yahoo and Ask. Quality content was even discussed in the link buying session. If you make yourself an authority in the subject you are targeting with your site, gaining links from reputable sources would probably be an easier task.
Although, a site with a large number of links can still receive ranking benefits, they just may not be permanent.
Concerning links, Jill stated “I do think you are always going to have content and links playing together.” She also believes link buying is fine as long the purchased link is actually providing your site with traffic. However, Jill advised would-be site owners not to obsess over links because search engines prefer “great pages that are naturally going to get links.”
Jill did acknowledge the instant gratification side of things keeps the obsessive behavior about links prevalent. Links are still quite powerful in the realm of search and can still be gamed by those looking to score a quick ranking boost, however.
Another area of discussion was the impact of personalized search. During one of the sessions, it was stated that the data from personalized search results is being actively mined by the search engines in an effort to see what results people actually find relevant. This led to the idea that one day, perhaps the search engines would base their organic results on the data acquired from the users of personalized search. I asked if Jill had any thoughts on this subject and she responded, “I think there’s definitely that move towards that, but it’s hard to say if the average person will know how to use it in terms of SEO it’s huge because it means you can’t check rankings anymore because no two rankings will be the same.”
Jill indicated this would probably be good because the focus on rankings would cease and people would put more emphasis on traffic and conversions.
From my perspective, this also places an emphasis on quality content over quality links. In order to garner a high ranking in personalized search, you have to be selected by the user to do so. I doubt very many users are selecting link spam sites to show up in their results, unless they are researching the phenomenon. The thinking is personalized search users would be more apt to select a site that provided them with quality content about the subject they were looking for.
While we talked about a number of other topics, like the future of search (Jill rightfully thinks it’s hard to predict where search will go next), and the staying power of blogs, which Jill feels may be a fad to some extent because, “it’s hard work doing a good blog everyday, posting something and putting all you have in to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if [the fad] burns out.” We also mentioned how some companies think blogs are a quick boost for their search engine presence, to which Jill replied, “Don’t do it if you don’t have a person dedicated.” However, she did not deny the effectiveness of a good blog. She mentioned good blogs will still acquire links, which in turn will benefit your search ranking.
We also discussed how bigger businesses approach the search engine industry in order to help promote their brands and products. Jill feels big companies are more comfortable with the PPC side of search: “It’s advertising. They understand it and they spend so much on that and they don’t even know they could be spending some on SEO.”
Speaking of bigger companies, we also discussed the Incisive’s purchase of the SearchEngineWatch brand (and all things related) and whether or not she plans on further attendance of SES conferences. Jill indicated that she would continue attending and she agreed when Mike mentioned it would allow Danny and company to increase focus on SES and perhaps even add some more stops.
As for Jill’s newest interest, namely Search Creative. It came about from a partnership with a web design/marketing company called Modern Creative. Due to the number of requests Jill had for redesigns (on top of the SEO work), she thought it wise to offer these services on top of her optimization work. From that, we get Search Creative, a company that offers SEO, redesign work, and standard PR marketing services.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest search news.
