This is my wish list from Google and the other search engines. Rankings should be based more on the content of the site and less on technical aspects (tags, domains, links). The theory is that, as SEO teams, we could devote more time to content, the good stuff that actually benefits the user.
1. Focus on Content. Focus exclusively on content. Best content wins, period. Once an algorithm can do that, it will corner the market. Perhaps a hive model rating system like Digg, but for search.
2. Ignore Keyword Phrases in the Domain. Stop rating domains based on keyword phrases. It just leads to stupid, boring, non-creative domains. Plus, people purchase 100 more as they think it helps (although that is a separate education issue SEO teams must tackle, but it’s related). Ugh. What a mess. Let’s try a system where domains don’t matter so people can choose ones for branding purposes alone.
3. Ignore Keyword Phrases in the Page Name. Stop rating pages based on keyword phrases in the page name. Ditto, only it’s worse with super long URLs. Let’s keep things short, not as short and ugly as TinyURLs, but short nevertheless.
4. Stop Counting Links. Stop counting links entirely, or simply discount them and put more emphasis on content. Oh Noes, the sky is falling. Yes, I FULLY realize this is not possible and the basis of the PageRank algorithm. However, wouldn’t it be cool if truly the best content was ranked No. 1 every time? It would probably put a lot of link teams out of business and put more content writers in business. Wow, that would be a huge shift, but something to think about. Of course, with communities like Digg, Twitter and others that simply do rate things based on content & ideas, it’s going to happen naturally.
5. Conversion Tools. Create tools that are super easy to track SEO conversion all the way to purchase or inquiry and rankings inside Webmaster Tools. Yes, there is the new Google “conversion” filter, but it’s not quite the same. The same people spends money with you anyway; make ‘em happy, they will spend more.
6. Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. Allow Google Keyword Search to show all data ever, even if a phrase only has a few queries. I hate seeing zeros and then knowing that they have a few real queries. Just tell me the real data even if it’s 4 people all year – that is good data to know.
7. Anchor Text Rating. Stop anchor text rating. Again, it’s just painful to read good copy only to have it ruined by a stupid SEO anchor text link put in the middle of a paragraph. Again, a focus on better copy.
8. Choose Your Own Filters. Let the searcher choose what they want to rate by (e.g., title, meta, anchor, and other tags). That is an odd idea, but might work. Choose your own rating system to see what filters you want to have more important.
9. Ignore the Title Tag. Ignore the title tag. OMG, did I just say that? Yes. Ignore it, as it’s just as abused as the meta keyword at this point. This will allow designers to put back in company names and nice, short, friendly page names to actually help the user.
10. Roller Coaster. Somehow stop the roller coaster of rankings. It’s just hell to see a client go from 1 to 10 to 5 to 1 in a few months, or even days. It’s really fun for client relations. This is more of an off-topic rant, as ultimately it’s up to the SEO team to make the rankings always high, but sometimes that is simply not possible. Perhaps setting up client expectations is a better route.
