Search engine optimization has been one of the most critical tools in enabling digital marketers to reach as many target audiences as possible in their marketing campaigns. With the advancement of the digital world, most of the buyers in the world search for products and services online.
Companies and brands have taken a significant concern in SEO to keep up with the changing market. To account for these changes in consumer behavior, companies are increasing SEO costs in order to capitalize and gain an edge over competition.
SEO has become one of the most influential channels in the marketing field because of its rapid progress and innovations. Google continues to adjust its algorithms aiming to make SEO more effective for websites and business owners.
While SEO has remained the same in certain ways, it is evident that SEO today is very different from the way it was ten years ago. With new changes in technology, there are unique behaviors in the way people buy online as well as discovering and consumption of content. This has changed SEO from its simple condition in its early years to more sophisticated in the modern days.
Which Trends Have Changed the Most in SEO
Mobile prioritization is one of the ways that SEO is rapidly changing in modern days. Over the last decade, we have experienced a fast shift from desktop to mobile. In the year 2014, for instance, mobile traffic was higher than desktop in internet searches.
This trend has been growing since then and continues to grow up to date. The popularity of smartphones has changed the way marketers manage their SEO strategies. Marketers are making their search engine optimization more mobile-friendly to try reaching as many mobile phone users as possible.
In the past years, SEO marketers used to focus on keywords as keywords acted as pillars of optimization. Your website was supposed to contain specific keywords in for it to be seen in search results. It is the keywords that enabled the sites to gain ranks on Google searches.
Nowadays, Google has changed the algorithms that rank all pages and websites. The growth of artificial intelligence has enabled the search engines to understand how keyword query and other individual words relate. Semantic searches are playing a significant role in improving the searches accuracy through deciphering the meanings of words used.
Due to the fall of using keywords, businesses and brands have shifted to emphasizing in the production of high-quality content. Google puts a lot of emphasis on appropriate content that meets the needs of the target audience.
The relevance of your content helps to frequent your page as well as sharing it with other people. Google adjusts its algorithms to reward websites that offer unique content that informs the target audience appropriately. The ranks will often bump down content with poor content, grammatical errors as well as poorly spelled words.
SEO has also changed in the way links contribute to search rankings. Links are being used to create more traffic on websites. When you have a site that links to your website, both search engines, and human beings are informed that the content on your website has more relevance and authority.
Search links give your sites more visitors, and Google continues to provide more power to your website. Initially, people used to gain the influence of their websites by manipulation of backlinks.
People used strategies such as buying backlinks or directories. Manipulation of backlinks may not be effective because the sites may be linked to unrelated links. The changes in Google algorithms have eliminated all these strategies.
In modern days, SEO is greatly influenced by social media proliferation. With social media, you can distribute your content to a broad target audience. Google has ways of serving users according to their search needs.
Brands can, therefore, use social media as a useful tool to optimize their content and promote their websites. You can as well take advantage of social media to improve the performance of your website.
SEO marketing has, therefore grown in many ways for the last ten years. These trends have brought about many differences in how marketers used to utilize SEO a decade ago. These changes have also come with many advantages and simplified the way websites utilize SEO.
Golden Gate SEO (www.goldengateseo.net) keeps on top of these changes and stays at the forefront of search engine optimization by conducting ongoing research and development. Our experts study Google algorithms and split test optimization changes on various websites to see what’s still working and what isn’t.
