Divergence – Easy Gets Easier, Hard Gets Harder

We are seeing technological divergence in all areas of the web, including SEO. The easy things get easier, while the harder things get harder.

This happened with desktop computing environments also – DOS was hard to use, it took someone with a high degree of skill to use it. Then GUI interfaces came along, and some tasks got easier. But the parts that made it easier, made it harder to do the deeper level stuff. With each improvement in ease of use for the non-techie, the technical stuff got buried deeper and troubleshooting got more difficult.

Websites have gone through a similar divergence. It is easier and easier to create a website. But it is getting harder and harder to create a GOOD one that WORKS. And it takes even more expertise to create, maintain, or troubleshoot the increasing layers of structure which make up a website. We can do MORE with one, but it takes a true expert to keep a professional website running underneath.

This is happening with SEO in a progressive way. Installing metatags and alt tags is now a simpler process – almost anyone can do it in nearly any web editing environment. You don’t have to know code to do it.

But getting in GOOD tags is increasingly difficult. The factors which determine good usage, and the increasing competitive issues make it more challenging to do it RIGHT – right, meaning effective.

The number of things which now affects SEO is much greater than what influenced it just three years ago. And it is growing, all the time. Hence, the divergence – the simple things are getting simpler, but the complicated things are getting more and more complicated.

I do not see this getting better. The more we rely on computers to do our work for us, the greater the need to automate complex tasks. And each automation of those tasks leads to another layer of complexity in the specializations which create that automation in the first place. Each time we make it easier for anybody to insert a bit of optimization, we increase the competition, and search engines respond by including more factors in their equations as people find it easy to use, or abuse, the new capability. Divergence will continue to increase.

Is there a solution? I don’t think so. Beyond keeping up with the more critical aspects, and keeping a finger on what makes the biggest difference in monetary returns, we can only recognize the divergence, and develop strategies to cope – to develop strategic partnerships which help us define our focus in a way that gets both sides of the job done, no matter which side we are on.