The biggest concern these days is search engine accuracy. Some feel the need to tailor the search to a User's sex, a User's age, a User's geography, etc. Others think it is a good goal to be able to evaluate a site base on freshness. Impressive stuff but they all overlooked one thing: The web sites they are trying to catalog do not conform to their algorithms.
The problem is that search engines base their algos to fit their user's queries while on the other side of the fence, Web Designers are creating web sites that conform to their client's aesthetic concerns and to traditional offline marketing criteria. Products and services are described in abstract terms that have no relation to how their customer is trying to find their web site. If you were searching for a Widget Communication Device, would you search using the phrase, "Making things intelligent and the universe better?"
When looking for a Widget Computing Device, do you search with the terms: "Ultimate Power Performance?" All SEO firms keep a check on what the search engine user is seeking and the content that exists on the average web site. The problem is that the search engines, by concentrating on the user query, and the user experience, are not bridging this gap. "If a web site is about Widgets," some search Companies seem to reason, "then the web site will have content about Widgets, and we'll know about it and rank it accordingly."
But any SEO knows too well that very often "widget" web sites sparingly use the word "widget," except perhaps, in a beautifully rendered gif. These are the tips to boost search engine accuracy if applied properly and that too within the ethics of SEO. Is it really about content? Yes, if you're talking about user query based algorithms and how to get a rank on them and No, if you are talking about the reality of web content. If that was not true, then you would not have been able to make a penny optimizing web sites. The search engines have reached a staggering level of algorithmic competence but the web sites they are categorizing defy categorization... and the results suffer. This situation is akin to a pianist reaching virtuoso status, but the piano is broken and out of tune. The pianist is the search Engine, the Web Site is the Piano, the Music is what the search Engine User is seeking. Sadly, the piano is out of tune and no matter how talented the pianist is, the music (the results), will suffer because the piano is out of tune.
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