In the past, the accepted on-page optimization technique to demonstrate relevancy and authority was through keyword frequency and keyword density. This optimization technique served brands well in the early years of SEO as search engines were largely unsophisticated and could not understand the context of content. However optimizing content solely on keyword frequency and keyword density had many “side effects”. One of the major, well-known side effects: this technique often produced unnatural usage of a keyword in the content. For example, it was not uncommon for the keyword to be integrated 5-10 times on a web page just to achieve targeted keyword frequency.

Next-Generation Optimization Technique > Adopt Latent Semantic Indexing

WebMetro has been transitioning away from keyword frequency and keyword density as an on-page optimization technique in favor of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) for the last few years. LSI is a key component in how the search engines understand the “context” of a website’s content. It is based on the co-occurrence clustering of words and the association of documents based on the occurrence data. Translation: the search engines essentially learn what a website’s words mean based on the other words around them. Think back to elementary school – when you learned about context clues. This practice is particularly important in many languages as it is fairly common for words to have multiple meanings.

LSI is not a new concept to the SEO world but its practice is still limited. The focus for many brands developing quality content to support SEO campaigns still remains on keyword frequency and density rather than latent semantic indexing. We’ve built custom LSI tables to help get rid of unnatural keyword usage and integrate other words and phrases for context support and to build authority for a primary keyword. In addition we also leverage LSI tables as a content development and link development strategy. The LSI tables provide topics for content and link development based on the user intent of each phrase. Finally LSI tables have another important function. With the old school keyword frequency and density optimization technique, SEO campaigns quickly reached diminishing returns in terms of maximizing traffic since they only focused on one keyword. In comparison custom LSI tables maximize the traffic opportunities from the resulting keyword combinations and permutations and thereby much more targeted traffic and therefore a higher campaign ROI.

In the past, SEO campaigns were judged based on achieving rankings for targeted keywords. Each month SEOs produce ranking reports to demonstrate how their efforts have improved the campaign. The ranking reports show keywords and how rankings have improved month over month for those keywords. While ranking reports are still important as an indicator of success, they are no longer as relevant as a critical success factor due to technological advancements in search such as personalized search, universal search and now real time search.

Personalized Search - Today search engines like Google provide personalized search results based on a consumer’s specific search behavior. As a result the top 10 search results one consumer sees are often different than another person’s results, even if that person is the next office or cubicle. The search engines are learning how people individually search. For some time now Google has been modifying the search results based on the things an individual consumer has searched for on Google and the websites visited. Since each person’s search behavior is different than his/her cubicle neighbor, the end result is personalized search results.

Universal Search - In 2007 Google introduced universal search that started blending listings from its news, video archives, images, local listings, PDFs and even books as it gathered information from crawling websites. How did this effect SEO campaigns? Even if a brand held a #1 organic listing, it could be pushed down to #5 or lower based on how Google displays the search results for that specific keyword.

Real Time Search - Since the summer of 2009, the major search engines are migrating towards real time search. Real time search is loosely defined as returning search results based on what people are searching for today – not delayed information gathered and processed from the crawling of a search engine spider. Real-time search engines like Topsy and Scoopler already provide you continuously updating real-time search results across a variety of services such as Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and Delicious. Real-time search is fascinating for both consumers and businesses because it lets you know what’s happening right now on any given topic.

Next-Generation Campaign Management > Adopt Maximizing Campaign ROI

While WebMetro still generates ranking reports for clients, we place more emphasis on maximizing the return on investment (ROI) from the SEO campaign. For the past several years we've tracked the ROI using our proprietary campaign tracking and reporting platform called DSMM Advantage™, now on its 3.0 version.

This platform tracks not only the number of leads or sales, but also the corresponding revenue, average order value and calculates ROI for each keyword. We also track and report search attribution metrics such as latency and assist metrics between SEO keywords, other online campaigns such as paid search and email, as well as offline campaigns such as direct mail and catalogs. With this kind of data we can literally see the event streams or campaign touch points within a specific conversion engagement.

It’s not the highlight of online marketing, but WebMetro has for years helped clients overcome negative reputation management issues concerning their brand. This type of campaign “pushed down” negative mentions about a client that appeared high in the organic rankings. Often the campaigns consisted of company or product names, but on occasion also included an individual’s name. These campaigns were reactive forms of online brand management.

Next-Generation Strategy > Adopt Internet Presence Management

While WebMetro still works with clients that have reputation management problems, we’ve taken a more strategic role with clients and internet presence management. With internet presence management, brands don’t wait for negative mentions to appear in search results. Instead they pro-actively build custom placements in the organic listings before a negative mention occurs. Simultaneously brand mentions are monitored 24/7 on microblogs like Twitter as well as traditional news and public relations outlets. In the event something negative appears, internet presence management acts as a proactive strategy already in place before a negative issue mushrooms.

For clients with aggressive growth goals, internet presence management also includes market and competitive intelligence. Not only is the internet monitored for a brand’s market keywords; competitors’ actions are also tracked.

With 2010 upon us, brands that want to improve their online marketing performance must drop old school SEO and adopt next generation optimization strategies and techniques. If brands don’t have top organic rankings today, they should consider adopting strategies like LSI and start measuring their campaigns based on ROI, not just rankings. Likewise they should look to the future of active brand management with internet presence management.

If your brand has top organic rankings today these optimization strategies and techniques need to be considered part of your plan to maintain or exceed traffic and ROI levels in 2010. Of course, failing to keep abreast of and adopt new organic strategies and techniques will result in loss of rankings, traffic and associated revenue.