How has the landscape in general for SEO, changed over the last 10 years? It’s time to explore the biggest shake-ups and the impact that they have had so far, on the SEO world. There aren’t many marketing channels that have evolved as quickly as SEO. If you look at SEO when it first hit the market, a lot of it revolved around stuffing keywords, tweaking code, and spamming links until a good ranking could be achieved. Luckily, things have since changed and Google have made a special effort to stamp out things like this quickly. If you want to find out more, then simply look below.

The Sharp Rise in Content

Google has continually refined what they believe is “good” as the years have gone by. The Panda update that took place in 2011 has served as a bit of a death blow to keyword stuffing and spam content. After this update, it was nearly impossible to get away with having gimmicky tactics such as favouring quantity over quality. Search engine winners were the ones who were able to produce the best content that actually had value, and this is one of the many reasons why content is still king to this day.

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Death of Links

Google have come up with their very own definition of what a link scheme is. They have also released a lot of examples. Ultimately, if you try and influence your ranking through links, then this could be seen as a scheme. Google have worked hard to try and stamp out any spam-based links and they have also tried to stop link farms too. The Penguin update has really helped link building to evolve and now it would seem that only valuable links that come through guest posts are the ones that will give you the authority to rank much higher.

The Change in Local SEO

Local search engine optimisation is incredibly different when you compare it to 2006. There have been a lot of small iterations and there have also been a lot of changes to the layout as well. This includes the local carousel and the 3-pack layout. The biggest update here would be the Pigeon update. This update essentially helped Google to incorporate ranking signals into the algorithm which lead to people getting an edge in local search. Google also tried to boost the overall visibility of business websites in search results too. Local searches are now way more common, and they are also very location specific.

Knowledge Graphs

The Google Knowledge Graph came about in 2012 and ever since then it has changed the marketing landscape as we know it. It helps to give users the direct and concise answers they need to the questions that they have, and it also gives them a box of information about a specific subject or topic. This is great for the user, but the issue is that it takes precedence over any organic results. Optimisers have had to work incredibly hard to try and compensate for this by avoiding any answerable keywords through Schema so that the content online can be delivered through the system.

Mobile

Mobile devices have rocketed in popularity since the very first iPhone came out back in 2007. Google have since done everything that they can to try and emphasise how important mobile responsiveness it is for any website. Mobile queries have since surpassed desktop queries in the Google search, and this has really had a positive impact overall. Of course, optimising for mobile is common but in this day and age, it is also essential. Google have continued to escalate how insistent they are when it comes to sites having a good mobile site. The mobile update has been a huge enforcer for standards like this as well which is very interesting to say the least.

Keyword Stuffing

Penguin and Panda helped to kill off the bad practice of keyword stuffing but another update in 2013 put the nail in the coffin. The Hummingbird update introduced semantic search, and this is Google’s own way of trying to decipher the intent of a user as opposed to trying to map out the keywords or the phrases required. Google is now trying to understand the meaning behind keywords, which has helped the search engine to become bigger and better.

So, SEO has changed remarkably over the years, and it is very interesting to see how these changes have influenced the marketing landscape as we know it. What does the future hold? Nobody knows, but either way, it is looking bright when you look at end-user experience.