Most websites take on a hub like appearance over time with the main site - the dot com - being at the center. Because of the ad-hoc growth the Search Engine Optimization performance of many hubs can often be far less than desirable - in fact you may have created an Search Engine Ranking monster.

If you look at the attached diagram, the hub appearance may look familiar. What is important is how you link each of the components of the hub to maximize the SEO performance of the site as a whole.

Indiscriminate linking can waste any potential link juice particularly when a site has a blog. Blogs tend to attract a lot of incoming links if they are effective. If your site has grown over time, the links will not be effective unless you have taken the time to plan your links for Search Engine Ranking effectiveness.

Your home page is generally the center of attention. It is often your landing page and from there visitors can move from sub page to sub page following the links. When a blog is incorporated, the blog can often become the center of focus and by default, the landing page. Your blog will generally require the most Search Engine Positioning work on a daily basis.

The question arises, do you want to send your traffic to the home page before they go shopping, or straight to the catalog or shopping cart? Studies show that most visitors, once they have decided to buy, want the fewest clicks possible. Your Search Engine Optimization strategy may require a different path.

To obtain a good customer satisfaction level and a good Search Engine Optimization outcome, you need to map out link paths for both. Where links clash, don’t be afraid to incorporate the ‘nofollow’ in the tags. This maintains the full benefit of your Search Engine Optimization links whilst providing a pleasing shopping experience for your customer.

The above diagram is a very simple website hub. I have seen far more complex hubs where sub-domains and pages are attached, often with little thought apart from the ‘it was a good idea at the time’ planning. When it comes to SEO, your whole site needs to be examined to ensure that each link is optimized to gain the most value. As you add pages or sub-domains, think about the links and how they can be optimized. Good Search Engine Optimization does not relate to just the page you are working on, good Search Engine Marketing considers that pages place in the bigger picture.

Search Engine Optimization is dying, at least according to Greg Howlett, writing on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim site. I can agree with much of what he has written and some of his points are quite valid. Take the following:

Search engines are too smart and they have a different agenda. They do not want to reward crummy companies that play SEO games–they want to give the top listings to the best companies.

It is hard to argue with that point particularly if you are a web user who gets a little tired of the useless results when doing a search. The last part of that statement worries me a little, but I will return to that a little later. If you are an SEO consultant then naturally you want to see any site you work on get to that front page of SERP’s.

What I or Greg think is a crummy site, I am sure there others including the site owners who think otherwise. If I am hired as an Search Engine Optimization consultant, do I say ’sorry, your site is too crummy’. Perhaps trying to get the site owner to de-crumify the site may be in order.

Putting that issue aside, the following statement is the one that really concerns me.

If you are not in the top ten of your industry, you had better find a way to get there in a hurry if you want to be on the first page of Google.

Greg also added:

Yes, this means that the rich will get richer and the poor will starve for SEO traffic. If you are not in the first category, you had better find a way to get there quick. The middle class is about to disappear.

The reason this concerns me, and the reason for my title is very simple. Big companies that are in the top ten do not rely on search engines for their traffic. In fact if your lazy like me, I type my search phrase in to the URL bar. If my search is for something simple like Coke or Pepsi - it will take me straight to their site, do not pass Google, do not collect Yahoo!. This is true for most large companies that are well recognized. I don’t know how much effort Coke or Pepsi put into Search Engine Optimization? Very little I would suggest.

If the search engines are going ignore popular little sites and list the “top ten of your industry“, search engines will become redundant. I don’t need Google or Yahoo! or any of the others search engines to find these companies. Their URL’s are generally either known, or easy to find. To them, SEO can die, they don’t need it.

The ramifications will spread further. If my Search Engine Optimization efforts have little hope of making it to the front pages of Google, then I doubt I will be advertising there. Social media sites will become more popular as advertising venues. This will strike a mortal wound at the very heart of Google - their advertising revenue.

Search engines and Search Engine Optimization live in a symbiotic relationship - if one goes then the other will be severely affected. The future will see the role of an SEO consultant change, but then, over the last 10 years that role has gone through many changes. I can see the value of keywords disappearing as search engines rely more on being able to ‘read’ content and context.

If search engines do put an end to Search Engine Optimization by concentrating on the top ten in any business sector, they will have taken the first step in their own demise. Search engines do, and will, need to produce better search results, until they do, SEO will be a requirement for every web site owner looking for that prime spot in the SERP’s.

Do you know what version of WordPress or Joomla you are using? It doesn’t matter what CSM, blogging software, or other website software that you use, every now and then it will be updated and you’ll need to get the latest version. I highly recommend that you always use the latest version for one simple reason: Security.

Hackers and crackers are smart guys. They learn too. Every time a software is updated, the makers of that software package fix the security issues from the last version. But security only goes so far. The bad guys are out there learning the latest tricks too.

Especially if you are using open source software such as

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• Pligg
• Or one of many other software packages available online

Because open source means that anyone can view the source code and modify it. That’s essentially an open door hackers and other bad guys to fiddle with the code to learn how it works. Then, when they figure it out, they create their own brands of software, robots, and malicious tools to break the code and hack into websites that use that software. That’s why you always see new software updates that say they’ve fixed security issues - because there are always security issues.

That doesn’t mean that your website is perpetually unsecure. It just means that you always have to stay one step ahead of the bad guys. And the surest way to do that is to update your software.

One feature I like about Google Webmaster Central is the Top 20 Queries tool. You can check to see what the top 20 queries for each of your websites are AND which ones are the most clicked on. This information is helpful to you as a webmaster for a couple of reasons. First, you need to know how people are finding your website. The top 20 queries allows you to see at a glance what queries people are seeking information on and which ones your site appears for. It even tells you the lineup in the SERPs for the pages you rank for. Secondly, if you see pages that you rank for but you are not appearing in the second column for (which queries people are clicking on) then you need to re-optimize those pages or tweak them so that you “get the click.”

Another detail that you can glean from this information is keywords you want to rank for but don’t. If pages that you want to rank for do not appear in the first list then you need to figure out a way to get them there. It may mean you need to optimize those pages better or it could mean you need more link building. Whatever the case, it’s time to analyze and see how you can keep improving. Search queries tell you a lot of information about where you fall in line against your competitors for your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Pay attention to them.