That was a great read! Thanks for sharing. I have to admit that I agree with you and have asked the same questions. I can easily see SEO consist of matching businesses and their sites to the needs of the client. Pretty much what the industry does (or should be doing) now, but with little or no focus on SEs and more on the end goal.

I use lots of long tail, and I think searchers do as well, but not as much as many think. In my opinion, the secret to long tail is in the relevancy/conversion end of things. That’s where the value is. I’m actually doing a post for SEP that explains my view on this and how to do it with more detail.

Like you, I question what searchers are actually reading when they do a search. I spend a lot of time researching various things, but I only read the descriptions if the titles are very similar.

As per the longer descriptions, it’s too soon to really know for sure, but most I’ve talk to, myself included feel that optimizing for both the long and would be almost impossible. The quality would suffer as a result. Still working on it though.

Angie Haggstrom
Freedom Freelance

Also, I think sometimes as SEOs we look into things to much….. For example: Google is expanding their descriptions but will the majority of normal searchers really notice the difference? Are people really using longer tailed keywords? And do normal searchers really even read descriptions or do they just click the first few sites?

Only time will tell what will happen with search! But, if you are interested here is a link to a blog post where I discussed some of my other theories on the future of SEO: http://www.bayshoresolutions.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/21/what-is-the-future-of-search-and-how-will-it-affect-search-engine-optimization-specialists/

You’re welcome. In my opinion, so long as you have good content, you should be fine. However, it’s always a good thing to keep an eye on. Glad you enjoyed!

Angie

Yes, I like the relative search results we’re now seeing. It requires less digging to find what you need. I do still find myself using quotations, long tails, wild cards, +/-, etc to get the right results, but it’s better. As a Google search addict, I’d like to see them take that a bit further.

Like you, my SEO side cringes for some of those very same reasons. To optimize, we are now in a situation where we need to target that main keyword, but still include enough relative terms that it will get picked up for some of them.

I suspect that if you write on ‘how to change oil on a car’, including words such as filters, dipstick, and the like should keep the content focused enough to get picked up on the right terms. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to work for all topics, and isn’t exactly something SEOers can predict enough to actually target. Not at the moment anyway.

A single keyword can have so many relative terms that the ones selected to hit the front page will be almost random. Possibly go by the number of search queries for each? I’m not sure. Those who do aren’t telling 😉

I actually kind of like this update from a user’s perspective.

Otherwise the top 5 results look somewhat like clones, and this will break it up, giving you a more diverse number of choices to pick from.

But from a SEO’s perspective, it makes everything harder.

“Which terms are similar enough?”

“Can I get Google to think of my site as related, yet still unique and giving a different option for searchers?”