5 Ways in Which SEO has Changed

by Ankita Sehgal Freelance Blogger, Lives in New Delhi

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been practiced since the genesis of the world wide web in order for web pages to rank higher on the search list. In its initial stage, SEO was the simple yet shady practice of stuffing keywords and spam links in the content to get a higher rank. However, since those days, we have come a long way and SEO companies in India need to know the way the technique has evolved in order to provide the best services to their clients.

1. Rise of Content: Content marketing has evolved to be the main SEO strategy. With the advent of Google, it has consistently defined what “good” content is and has served a death blow to spam content and stuffing of keywords. Search engine winners are those who churn out original, quality content.

2. Reshaping local search: Without going much into the technical details, with the Pigeon update, Google has successfully transformed local searches to become more location specific, thus delivering relevant content to the user. This has given well-optimized websites a clear edge over others in local search.

3. Knowledge Graph: The Knowledge Graph first emerged in 2012, which aimed at giving users direct and succinct knowledge about their subject of search in a box. While this was a victory for the users, it was certainly not so profitable for organic search results. Optimizers have sought ways to compensate for this, mostly by trying to avoid commonly answerable keyword targets.

4. Mobile Prioritization: The dependency on mobile devices has expounded exponentially in the past decade and website optimization for mobile is a must. In 2015, mobile searches officially surpassed desktop searches, thus mobile optimization has become a downright necessity.

5. Update pacing and impact: A few years ago, Google released several major and seemingly random updates for its optimization algorithm, which would put search optimizers in frenzy with each update. However, the scenario has changed now, with optimization algorithms having found a solid foundation, the updates are now rolled out gradually, are spaced out and the changes are less noticeable, without shaking the whole search engine optimization industry structurally.

It is evident that in the recent times, SEO has been fairly standardized. Only the good content marketers can reap the benefit of the current structure of the optimization algorithms. While no one can guess what awaits this industry in the future, top SEO companies in India have closely studied the way this industry has evolved. It helps to gain insight into what may lie next. Right now, the rapid changes have slowed down to give way to a more smooth landscape, but who knows when the next big change will hit the industry.