Yes, Virginia, the Big Guys Do SEO When you get the kind of experienced, knowledgeable and sometimes opinionated people together that the SEO Chat forum attracts, discussions can get a little contentious. But that just adds to the fun, especially when trying to unravel some of the mysteries of the field. Recently, one of our posters wondered why, if SEO is so powerful, the big names â€" the Microsofts, Amazons, Nokias, Facebooks, Googles, etc. â€" didn't seem to do SEO campaigns, or at least didn't seem to need SEO to get to their dominant position. Does this mean that SEO is really weak, especially when compared with, say social media marketing? You can imagine what kind of response that attracted! It even called into question what, exactly, search engine optimization really is. Respected forum member ClickyB pointed out that “All of the sites you mention have something unique/highly valuable to offer and/or are world leaders in their fields. They all practice SEO of a sort - linkbait.†He went on to say that that kind of branding negates the need for other forms of SEO (because it will result in huge numbers of “free backlinksâ€). Another poster pointed out that Amazon targets long tail keywords and gets incoming links through widgets and APIs, while social networks like Facebook are pretty viral. The view seems to be that if you offer a unique and valuable product or service, you don't have to run deliberate SEO campaigns. Or do you? Looked at another way, anything you do to cause people to link to your site is SEO -- in which case, even brand-building that doesn't take place online, such as including your site's URL in a billboard ad, could be thought of as SEO. Doing SEO for a large company with a big brand name, one poster revealed, can be very different from doing it for a smaller company. The goal is different. This poster said that he works as an SEO for a company with a huge brand name, and “my job isn't to make the website rank for its keywords, [it]is to ensure that all the backend developments that they do adhere to Google's Quality Guidelines and the site has all the basic SEO elements.†Still, how did the big guys get to this position, and how can you duplicate it? One thoughtful poster gave a list. First, they promoted themselves as authority sites targeting a specific niche (selling books online for Amazon, for example). Then they made sure they were linkable â€" that is, they offered widgets, APIs, or valuable information that cannot be found somewhere else (think Microsoft). They provided a better user experience than their competitors (think Facebook vs. Myspace). They offered incentives to bring in new users and links. And above all, they continued to grow, which makes Google happy. Hopefully this list will give you some ideas you can use for your web site. Good luck!
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