I was talking with our SEO guy recently and he mentioned this SEO starter guide from Google.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … guide.html

I was wondering if you thought that this would kill off the SEO industry?

Not sure how it would really... it's nothing more than the basics that we've all known all along.

It's not really what a SEO does IMO...merely the rule book.

I agree with dave - that document is about how to build an seo friendly site.

The document doesn't tell you how increase the position of your page for a given search term or how to get good quality backlinks.

I dont know if they are actually trying but I read on sitepoint.com an article about google giving more importance to brands, this will surely harm all small business and change seo all the way here is the post : http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=602405

i don't think so. it looks like google only wants us do basic pure white hat seo. they are just controlling spams or any kind of method that will hurt their algorithm.

I don't believe that Google is killing the SEO industry, but it can. As long as SEO compliments the big G, then I don't see why it would.

Before Google, SEO was as basic as stuffing keywords into titles and meta keywords. Infact, I don't remember it actuially being called SEO back then (feel free to correct me theGypsy).

On that basis, Google created the SEO industry. SEO is half the income of Google (adsense?) so I doubt they'll do anything to kill it off completely.

SEO and Google go hand in hand.  There was always SEO methods, but Google and Yahoo started cracking down on SPAMMERS and now there are ethical practices used in SEO.

griffinsbridge wrote:

Before Google, SEO was as basic as stuffing keywords into titles and meta keywords. Infact, I don't remember it actuially being called SEO back then (feel free to correct me theGypsy).

On that basis, Google created the SEO industry. SEO is half the income of Google (adsense?) so I doubt they'll do anything to kill it off completely.

Exactly.

Rik9000 wrote:

I dont know if they are actually trying but I read on sitepoint.com an article about google giving more importance to brands, this will surely harm all small business and change seo all the way here is the post : http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=602405

When someone asked Matt Cutts whether google is giving importance to brand than he replied that this is not exactly brand this is the name and trust of the company which they have build.

So I do not think that there is any harm on that ... if you type Mac Air and Apple site come at first point than this is quite fine.

I don't think so. In fact, Google is helping the SEO industry by coming up with helpful tools and applications (ex: Analytics, Webmaster tools, etc.).