Initially, SEO emerged along with the Internet at the dawn of the latter. Not much people expected or predicted the chances of the vast impact of SEO on the market which it has now on daily life. In a very short span of time, from a simple organism within a single cell, SEO emerged into a breathing, living and adaptive structure which is used in the creation of vital and relevant relationships. At present, a strong connection is established between the generation full of knowledge-hungry people and the required information through the personalised and accessible network of important content media.
At its birth, SEO was just a mere practice of stuffing the webpages with keywords, twisting the back end codes and to spam the links. This continued until a good rank for the desired keywords was achieved. But, as a blessing, Google has checked this practice very fast and the algorithm of searching has been evolving since then. With time, the approach to SEO has changed a gone through significant changes in the past 10 years.
Changes occurred in SEO:-
Rise in the Content:-
As a vital part of the strategy of successful SEO, there has been a significant rise in the content marketing. Though Google always made it strict that the content must be refined and good in the past years, Panda update released in 2011 made it necessary and prohibited stuffing of the keywords and contents which are spammed. After these gimmicky tactics about the content like providing content of high content but compromising the quality and substance of the same became practically impossible. Instead, the webpages which had valuable content of best quality became the winners in the search engine, proving the fact the content is still the undefeated king in the market of SEO.
Fewer links Schemes:-
There is a definition of ‘link scheme’ as per Google along with examples for better understanding. These guidelines may appear to be ambiguous to some people but in simple words, if you make any attempt to influence the ranking of your webpage forcefully can be termed as scheme. By the late 200s, link building practices based on spam was stamped out by Google and such practitioners were penalized but it was mainly in 2012, link building got its proper form with the Penguin Update. Now the authority which you need to secure higher rank can be earned only through natural link attraction and important links attached with guest posts.
The Local has been Reshaped:-
The SEO which we see today is abruptly different from what it was in even 2006. There have been several changes and iterations occurred in the layout such as the modern layout of 3 pack and local carousel. Still, the most significant change which took place in the ranking factors in 2014 by the Penguin Update. With the latest update, ranking algorithm and traditional signals of web ranking have been incorporated heavily by Google. It also gave the well-optimized websites a boost in local search. In the search results of Google, it also revamped the visibility of the websites of the high-authority directory. To be more specific, in the last few years local searches have become more common than before and also more location specific because of the mobile devices.
SERP Overhauls:-
It is not even possible to count how many times SERPs or the search engine results pages have changed in the last few years, though some of these changes are not even important and they’re very small, so those changes can be overlooked. Even after that since 2006 considerations of the people have evolved noticeably.
The Rise of the Knowledge Graph: –
Knowledge graph of Google has acted as a major influencing factor in modern SEO. It first came into practice in 2012. The main aim of this knowledge graph is to provide people exact, concise and direct answers to their queries and often presenting the users a bunch of information on any general subject or an answer if the query made is straight-forward. This is very user-friendly but sometimes it takes over the organic search results.
Mobile Prioritization: –
In the last decade, mobile phones have gained immense popularity and became a necessity in our lives. Google utilized this fact very well and did its best to optimise the websites for the people who are surfing from their mobile phones. As a result, in 2015, desktop queries have been surpassed by mobile queries in Google Search. Mobile optimization is no more just a common thing but also a needful thing now to continue the service on Google in every small part of the world.
The Soft Death of Keywords: –
The updates of Panda and Penguin are the root causes behind the death of the keywords, better to say soft death as they strictly prohibited stuffing of keywords. But in 2013, the Hummingbird update, which introduced semantic search actually introduced soft death of keywords more vividly. Semantic search is a way for Google to decipher the intent of the users rather than to map out separate keywords and phrases. Now, Google is more focused to understand the meaning of the keyword more than matching it. So the search which is keyword-centric does not work like previous.
Update Pacing and Impact: –
The way of calculating the rankings has changes seemingly in the past years. The updates have become smaller which are not that much noticeable and roll out easily which cause less impact on the industry, unlike previous years.
The Future of SEO:-
There is no sign that SEO will lose its glory and we are certain of a few things regarding SEO such as- an experience which will be more focused and niche made on the basis of the content which will be of high quality, intent and unique. The internet is now transformed to provide a more instant and personalized gratification. Users desire to get more contextual search results giving minimum effort. The smart gadgets of this age constantly try to provide such solutions to the content. SEO is expected to evolve more in the coming years in order to fill the requirements by taking data from the external platforms. So the marketers should get ready as soon as possible to develop a consistent and strong presentation of their brand.
