randle - 2:50 pm on Dec 14, 2011 (gmt 0)

So in a way, forgetting about the Google algorithm is a brilliant strategy because you eliminate the middle man... and then paradoxically, the middle man reappears with more traffic for you. But beyond taking technically sound steps (important for every website and every search engine) don't start directly chasing more Google traffic. Instead, keep optimizing for ALL traffic from ALL legitimate sources. In other words, marketing and building your online business is now a very savvy SEO strategy too. Where should you look for links? From websites where a link brings you direct traffic. Who should be involved in social media sites? Anyone whose target market is involved in social media. Etc, etc, etc. It's very possible that soon enough Google will not be announcing or confirming updates or iterations of Panda at all. We should be prepared for that. As it is we have had ten months of hints on the record. That's something.

Every person involved in any way in web marketing, and I'm especially talking about all the nit wit companies that bombard me with "SEO" services every day, should be forced to read this and sign something that states they did. If your running around talking Page Rank, link building, key word density and anchor text, your going the way of the local delivery ice man when refrigerators became a common consumer item.

It's way past the time to move on from all the old school stuff that helped make most of us a pretty good living, for quite some time.

Thats my rant for the day, but I'm confident we will now return to our regularly scheduled programming of discussing minor algo tweaks and theories on how to beat them.