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Mysterious Ways Of How SEO Strategies Have Changed Over The Years

March 15, 2018
3:47 AM

“Old Ways Won’t Open New Doors” – Unknown Wordsmith

Before going deep into how SEO strategies have changed, let’s check out about the change in general & how marketers should view it. It’s no secret that everything in the world changes with the passage of time. The weak evolve to be strong, the poor become rich, and empires weaken & pave way for new ones. Change has always been the constant of the way of life & all of its aspects. This is something that marketers should never forget.

Marketing has been there since the dawn of civilization & marketers have been taking advantage of how societies have evolved with time & technology. From persuasive communications of early men during the age of the barter system to this modern age of internet businesses, marketing has evolved in the most amazing ways & is still evolving whether it’s content marketing or email marketing. The same goes for SEO strategies, with the ranking algorithms & techniques changing frequently.

Ask any expert in digital marketing & they will tell how drastically SEO strategies have changed over the years since their inception. Today search engines have turned out to be battlefields, where organizations try to compete with each other for business, and strategies of SEO have turned out to be the weapons that marketers can use to fight these battles.

What's the deal with SEO strategies?

In simple terms, Search Engine Optimization is the process of narrowing down search results in search engines to show only the most relevant websites. There is an average of only 10 websites on a search results page & this makes it crucial for businesses to get their name & websites so they can be viewed in the search results. This is where the importance of SEO strategies comes up.

SEO Strategies: Old School vs New School

Yeah, SEO strategies have adapted with time, modern user trends, algorithm updates of Google & modern technology. But this was not the scene back in the early days. Old school SEO strategies were dependent on agencies & websites gaming search engines to pull in customers & become the first in rankings. Many of these SEO strategies which are outdated can penalize your websites, as Google identifies & demotes websites with irrelevant content as of its Penguin & Panda updates.

Old School SEO strategies were based on stuffing keywords & keyword variants to everywhere you can- into content, tags, locations, etc. The writing was just for search engines & continuous reuse of evergreen content was a practice. Since cloaking was common in the early days there were instances where the keywords didn’t match the content at all.

An example of Keyword Surfing

Today, it’s all about answering the searcher’s query. SEO strategies have progressed to be more focused on helping users accomplish their tasks. This can be regarding purchasing a new product, educating themselves about a certain task, or learning how to complete A DIY task. Inserting every single keyword variant is no longer practiced as the content is now about the searcher’s intent.

SEO strategies & google knowledge graph in the brand world

Google knowledge graph was introduced to aid users view factual summaries that are related to their search queries involving biographies of notable figures, cast of the movies & tour dates for musicians. In simple terms, Google knowledge graph is the semantic database in the search engine page where entities are kept in relation to one another, set in a thematic context & assigned attributes.

Today Google’s knowledge graph gives users some control of the rich information that’s displayed alongside the search results. Office reps now have the ability to make updates & changes as they see is fit for their customers. It’s not like that the change is neither immediate nor unregulated but it’s a major process for helping companies display accurate information.

The knowledge graph is paving new approaches towards SEO strategies. As data itself is meaningless but becomes useful when it gets linked with various data sets available on the web.

Backlinks influencing SEO strategies

Link building was & still is one of the major players in SEO strategies. Backlinks are the links from other websites that drive traffic to yours if someone clicks on them. The SEO strategy based on link building is that when a site links to your website, it’s a signal for both humans & search engines that your site has relevant & authoritative information that can help them. The more relevant sites link to you, the more Google will view your website as authoritative.

While earlier it was normal for people to buy thousands of backlinks for their website in order to rank higher today it’s the case of quality over quantity, many of the recent algorithm updates from Google are geared towards the quality of the backlinks. Furthermore, the SEO strategies on link building that were once “white hat” are now considered “black hat tactics” & today the only way to earn rank is through natural link attraction & link building with guest posts.

The proliferation of social media in SEO strategies

Moz’s Search Engine ranking factors study – Websites with Google My Business, Facebook likes, tweets & comments rank higher as compared to websites that do not strong media presence.

Before the days of social media platforms, online social sharing used to happen via email & instant messaging, places that largely fell outside the scope of SEO strategies. But today, social media greatly affects SEO strategies as it has become a major tool for promoting a brand’s message to current & future customers. Social media also enables you to boost the reputation of your company & attract users who can enjoy your valuable content.

SEO strategies in the age of mobile prioritization

Mobile traffic exceeded desktop traffic in the year 2014 exactly 7 years after iPhone emerged back in 2007, which resulted in the explosion of the popularity of mobile devices. Today Google is working to emphasize the importance of optimizing websites for mobile users which is huge in relation to SEO strategies. The rise of mobile devices in digital marketing has changed the ways marketers construct SEO strategies.

Wait.! That's not all!

SEO strategies have come a long way. In today’s internet world mastering SEO strategies help out a lot in making your company more successful in search appearance. What you have to focus on in 2018, while developing content you should incorporate SEO strategies for the modern age.

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