Let's talk about SEO now and in the future...I'll add any random thoughts and ideas to this thread as we go.

If you have comments, additions or questions, post 'em.

The SEO "crowd" is talking about a possible big change in Google nick-named "May Day" as it <may have> happened around May 1, 2010.

There's speculation that Google has somehow devalued low-quality links in a way that is affecting long-tail SERPs.

I posted the following on the Warrior Forum...I'll add to it here:

You are correct that top rankings seem to be zero sum, and if one site drops out of the Top 10 another takes it's place, and assumably it's traffic.

However, there's a few more dynamics at play...

A couple are personalized and localized SERPs, which means multiple "Top 10". This will cause the same amount of traffic to be divided between more sites.

Another factor is the new "Everything" column on the left. This pushes all the SERs and the top Adwords about two inches to the right. The top AdWords ads are now right smack in the middle of the "hottest" zone, according to Google's own heat map. This could raise click-throughs by a percentage point or two, and lower them to the organic SERs.

Plus with the new "Everything" column, if it is expanded it offers all these choices:

------------------------------------------
Everything
Shopping
Images
Videos
Maps
News
Books
Blogs
Updates
DiscussionsMoreFewer
Search Options
Any time
LatestPast 24 hoursPast weekPast monthPast yearCustom range...
From:
To:
ex: 5/23/2004

All results
SocialNearby
All results
Visited pagesNot yet visited
Standard view
Related searchesWonder wheelTimeline
Standard results
Sites with imagesFewer shopping sites
More shopping sites
Page previewsTranslated search
------------------------------------------

That's a lot more options for users to choose....

There could be plenty of other factors, but the one's I pointed out above have nothing to do with what we'd call "typical SEO" or algorithms, but simply Google offering users more choices and customization which would result in less traffic for the same keywords.

As we can see, there's some big changes going on. And there will probably be a lot more...

Right now Google, Yahoo and it seems AOL are no longer giving away easy email addresses. These addresses are a major part of the SEO/link spammer toolkit.

Site owners are getting fed up with comment and profile link spam. Developers like Kickapps are updating their software so that all profile links are nofollow. Each Kickapps profile use to allow for all sorts of dofollow links and RSS. Most of the major bookmarking services are now nofollow.

And this is probably just the start, I can see bloggers getting so fed up that they shut down comments altogether and forum software making profile pages "private" so that they aren't even spidered/indexed.

Rumors are Google has devalued cheap and easy links. I'm not sure if there's truth to this or not, but it will probably be true in the future..

The fact is, if we can find these sites using footprints to search Google looking for pages where it's easy to place links, Google can probably find them too. It would also be pretty easy to tell comment links from those in the actual content of a page.

From Google's point of view, why should these easy-to-automate links count? Are they an indication of quality or that a webmaster bought some software? I think common sense says it's the webmaster bought some software.

The question now becomes, what should we do about it?