As a business owner, you probably know the importance of maintaining a high search ranking. When someone searches for a product or service offered by your business, you want them to see your website listed at the top of the search results page. Using search engine optimization (SEO), you can encourage higher rankings for your target keywords. However, SEO has changed over the years, forcing business owners and digital marketers to rethink their strategy.
Focus on High-Quality Content
There’s a reason — well, several reasons — why Google is the world’s leading search engine: because it delivers the highest quality results. In recent years, the Mountain View company has taken an even more aggressive approach towards promoting high-quality content in its search results. In 2011, Google launched the Panda algorithm update, which lowered the rankings of websites with low-quality content and subsequently raised the rankings of websites with high-quality content.
Backlink Schemes Fading From SEO
Another major change in SEO is the elimination of backlink-building schemes. Don’t get me wrong, backlinks still play an important role in a website’s search ranking. In the past, however, it wasn’t uncommon for websites to rank solely by having a high number of backlinks. Google and Bing have both adjusted their respective algorithms to overcome this type of manipulation. Now, search engines pay closer attention to the quality of backlinks a website has. Even if your business’s website has fewer backlinks than a competitor’s website, your site may rank higher if it has higher quality backlinks.
Local
Of course, there’s also a growing focus on local factors affecting a website’s search ranking. In recent years, the Internet Protocol (IP) address from which a search is made has played a greater role in the results delivered by the search engine. If someone in Chicago searches for “pizza,” for instance, Google responds by showing more results of pizza restaurants located in and around Chicago.
Mobile
We can’t talk about SEO changes without mentioning the dominance of mobile. Statistics show that more users now search from mobile devices than desktop computers. Search engines live Google and Bing have acknowledged this trend by showing different results depending on the device from which the search was performed.
These are just a few of the ways that SEO has changed over the years. As a business owner, you should leverage these trends to achieve higher visibility in the search results for your website. After all, the higher your site ranks, the more traffic it will receive.
