photo credit: nhayashida
In the last week, Sebastian Vettel became the Formula 1 champion. It’s a sport with global appeal, generating millions of dollars of revenue for anybody associated with it. Despite this, there are two things I am sure with it.
- Rule Changes Are Common – Every year there are rule changes (see 2010 Rule Changes) in Formula 1. These are designed to make it more exciting, relevant & more competitive, allowing the quality (and occassionally the scum) to rise to the top.
- I Don’t Understand It’s Appeal – there we go, I admit it. I can’t understand the appeal. Sure I wouldn’t turn it off if it was on the telly, but I don’t understand why people get up at sillybuggeroclock on a Sunday to watch it, or analyse what is effectively a parade.
Therefore I conclude that Formula 1 is Dead.
Despite the fact it’s turning over billions, has worldwide coverage, has corporates throwing money at it, lucrative to be seen with & generally a good thing. It’s dead. Largely for the two reasons I said above.
Sounds silly doesn’t it?
But that is exactly what people are saying about SEO. An industry that is turning over billions, has worldwide coverage, has corporates throwing money, lucrative to have & generally a good thing. It is been declared over and over as being dead. Heck, even a great guest post by Gary Arndt where he said he believed that Social Media was a Wiser Investment than SEO, got flagged up as an “SEO is Dead” post, when it quite clearly wasn’t.
SEO is prone to rule changes. In fact it happens all the time. Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t mean you should dismiss it.
To return to the Formula 1 analogy, if you look at the teams at the top of the standings, the top 3 constructors have 109 years experience and 25 construction championships between them. From my (limited) knowledge, it seems that experience does count in Formula 1.
As it does SEO.
That’s what people invest in. Long time SEO’s with a proven track record of success will attract investment. Those who test, try things, play around with things, build good content, research & generally spend time getting “it” will end up dominating rankings, as well as getting compensated well for their troubles. Those who try for a bit, fail & then give up declare that SEO is Dead, and move onto the next fad to make their millions (e-book on interviews anybody?). This is not necessarily a problem, as it makes my job easier.
So this is the question: will you research, test, try & succeed like Ferrari? Or will you give up like Footwork-Cotsworth?
Tags: SEO, seo opinions | Comments: 12 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
As a long time F1 fan (who disagrees with the title!) I think the analogy is spot on! Nice one!
Congratulations. You win SEO blogging.
Although, don’t you think this post might just have killed SEO? You’re taking a huge risk.
I don’t think it’s dead per se. I just think it’s easier to get a decent roi from other methods.
Good post, Rhys. SEO’s not dying, but it’ll struggle to stay alive as Google gets cleverer. The agencies getting clients to the top of rankings by building link networks of unrelated blogs (e.g. posting links to a Bingo client on the same page as a fashion boutique) aren’t sustainable and will be beaten soon.
One thing that will never change though – Google will always like people who make quality content that people are genuinely deep linking to.
Google has been getting more and more intelligent for over 10 years and nothing has changed – marketers will carry on adjusting their sails with every significant update as they have had to for the past decade.
Enjoyable post Rhys, great analogy!
Liked the analogy.
At the end of the day, the stricter Google (and other search engines) is, the more encouragement there is for white-hat SEO, we as the consumers win as we find better quality content.
In terms of our jobs, Google will never completely close it off. Yes, they get smarter and make it more difficult. But it’s just a matter of evolving, forever-pushing the boundaries and finding those loop-holes. That’s what the top F1 teams do every year; think Red Bull’s 2009 double-diffuser, 2010 flexing front wing and 2010 McLaren’s F-duct.
For a long time, I was a die-hard F1 fan. And one of those who’d get up at 5am just to watch the qualifying round (not to mention the actual race).
But after 5 years of rooting for Raikkonen, and him winning I promptly lost interest. The repetitiveness of it all finally got to me, I guess.
Oh and I hate the rule changes. I’d always had to research these things before a new season, or otherwise I’d get all frustrated with the odd differences compared to the previous year’s races.
Dunno if F1 is dead in general, but for me it died 3 years ago
You seem to be labouring under the mistaken belief that Formula 1 is intended to be a sport. It’s not. It’s a corporate marketing fuckfest often mistaken (especially, unfortunately, by broadcasters and sports reporters) for a sport.
Once you get that sorted out, Formula 1 makes complete sense, and is no more dead than the average brainless zombie.
SEO will continue to evolve. Google is like a living organism; constantly under attack from “pathogens” (us?) trying to influence it away from its core precepts. Nature found that evolution is the key to survival; search engines find the same strategy works for them too.