The number of frequently updated SEO blogs is dropping, and professional SEO services are looking for the reasons why.
The main reasons seem to be Web 3.0 and short message services (SMS). While SEO blogs will survive for at least a little while longer, the question of "how long" remains. What are Web 3.0 and SMS, though, and are they threatening to replace SEO blogs?
SMS / Microblogging services Short message/microblogging services such as Twitter, Plurk and FriendFeed hit the social networking streets with a big bang and kept right on going. For instance, despite the fact that there are still kinks and technical difficulties, Twitter's traffic increased 500% by July 5th of this year, compared to the same date last year. Even Google jumped on the SMS bandwagon, buying Jaiku in October of 2007, and Barack Obama used Twitter as part of his 2008 presidential campaign.
Professional SEO services can breathe easy, however – at least with SMS. Instead of a replacement, microblogging looks to be more of an addition to blogging than anything else. Enterprising bloggers have been using SMS as a way to advertise their blogs – a short message, "Hey, I've got a new addition, this is today's topic."
While SMS isn't something to worry about, it is something that professional SEO services should look into as part of their campaigns, since it won't be long now before the search engines add SMS web pages to spider crawling.
Web 3.0 Web 3.0 is a phrase coined by John Markoff (New York Times) to describe new - and future - web technologies. It's supposedly the third decade of the web, encompassing the years 2010 to 2020, and covers up-and-coming technologies that compromise "the intelligent Web". Specifically, Web 3.0 deals with Internet-based services that use formulas and programs such as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), data mining and artificial intelligence, to name a few. In other words, search engine companies are using machines and programs with an understanding of information - and how we humans perceive this information - to give users a better experience.
Web 3.0 is, and will be, giving professional SEO services a hard run for their money. Black Hatters – and most likely some White Hatters - are quaking in their ergonomically designed computer chairs. While Web 3.0 won't cause the extinction of SEO, it does call for an overhaul of SEO practices. Link farming, keyword spamming and other questionable practices are becoming outdated; with the induction of LSI, content is now key – how clear is it; how relevant is it; how good is it.
So, if SMS and Web 3.0 aren't causing the downfall – or lack of SEO blog news – what is? Well, in a way they are. Web technology changes so fast, SEO article writers and bloggers are hard-pressed to keep up with everything. Information on SEO blogs has fallen through the cracks, replaced by LSI, Web 3.0, SMS and any number of other programs, technologies and practices.
Whatever the reasoning, the message to professional SEO services is clear: Keep on your toes, people, the train's a'comin – if you're not a passenger, you're a fatality.
