What is the SEO
A top place in search engines, recognition, and attraction of new customers comprise the major goals of companies using digital marketing in their advertising. To make your website stand out among millions of others on the Internet seems to be something next to impossible...but it is not for as long as there has been search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO forms part of the main components in digital marketing strategies that enhance visibility over the web and social platforms. Apart from being among the pioneer strategies in digital marketing, it also stands to represent the major shift in this field to conform with new trends as well as the needs of users.
Continue reading to learn in detail what SEO is, how it works, and the advantages it can deliver to your project!
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SEO, or search engine optimization is a set of techniques and tools used towards the optimization of any type of site and page for easier analysis by such powerful search engines as Google. The easier and faster the reason for a query is identified, the more value added to users.
SEO improves your visibility in search engines which increases the chances that you’ll show up in the results for those specific keywords and terms related to them. Since SEO is a marketing strategy, naturally its goal does not end at improving rankings in the search engine but in converting visitors into customers, thereby not limiting optimization to only search engines. Optimizing pages with the user in mind is one of the core principles of modern SEO.
So, SEO may improve a brand’s digital presence and its relevance, authority, and visibility across the industry. Since SEO is organic (i.e., unpaid), it makes the best option for being highly cost-effective.
The infographic gives the term SEO a place and describes why digital marketing is important.
Define SEO and state its importance
History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization
As noted above, SEO is not just described as one of the first digital marketing strategies but also the one which bore maximum changes, especially in recent times.
To comprehend what goes into search engine optimization, let us trace the evolution of SEO from its beginning to date.
The dangers of keywords: The advent of SEO
Search Engine Optimization has not long claimed the spot as the beginning of digital marketing. Significant to today, yes, but in fact, it has been around for close to 30 years. The first search engines emerged at the beginning of the 1990s. Google was not even available until 1996.
Search engines naturally gained popularity right from the start and presented unprecedented opportunities to execute marketing campaigns. However, one question still lingers on how to drive traffic to a particular website.
Much of it happened almost accidentally when some content producers discovered how easily they could manipulate the results of a search. More particularly, by just repeatedly typing in the desired words right on the page. This came to be known as keyword stuffing and is now considered to be a black hat SEO technique that gets sites penalized by search engines. That's enough to give major web rankings a go.
This is because at first, search engines only took into account keywords to look for the information needed by users. However, search engines have matured and in present times take up hundreds of different factors when considering the ranking of a website.
Google in particular has undergone innumerable updates, most of which are never known to SEOs who work extensively with Google. Having a monopoly over the online search market, getting inside information regarding the nitty-gritty about how the website content is ranked becomes an essential component in building high-quality marketing campaigns.
Google Algorithm Changes: Impact on SEO
SEO and all of its processes and complexities were first conceived at the birth of Google. Formulas are what the search engine uses to determine which pages rank in search results.
Google typically makes two types of changes.
Google updates are small improvements that adjust certain parts of the algorithm to better its performance in some areas. They do not normally cause a big effect on search results unless high-quality SEO optimization is put in place.
Google Core Updates are updates at the level of algorithms and hence change the ranking of websites in the SERP. In simple terms, Google updates are meant to be one-off updates but core updates have an extensive way in which Google evaluates information.
Updates from Google are so varied that, in most cases when there has been an update, they do not even notify users. However, core updates are reported. Let's look at the most important updates in recent years and see what impact they have had on search engine optimization (SEO).
Panda algorithm (2011)
The Panda update in 2011 was a total re-haul of Google’s algorithm, and with it, content meant everything. Now websites would be rated based on the quality of their content. People wanted to see original material; give them original material and weigh this above pages with identical content. It made user-website interaction increasingly important in affecting rankings.
In 2012, black and white were still the main players in the fashion world thus Penguin was known as the second iteration of the algorithm. This update checked on how a site’s link building was going. Google Penguin ultimately checked on the quality of external links that were related to a page.
Before Penguin, the more external links a website had, the higher it ranked. After Penguin, sites that participated in link farms or linked to less reputable sites dropped in the rankings. In other words, the authority of the referring site and the relevance of the link to the page were considered more important.
In 2013, web content started getting scored on the basis of semantics and user interest. Thus, Google Hummingbird widened its understanding of content to embrace keyword variations plus related keywords. This is a core update that changed the way the algorithm processes information and even more importantly how search queries are generated.
In practice, SEO content optimized for long-tail keywords is the major determinant of getting good rankings on the result page and thus visibility of the website.
Pigeon Algorithm (2014)
With how popular business-related websites have been getting all over the Internet, in 2014, search results got organized according to a new algorithm. That's when Google Pigeon happened. Its update made it possible to consider where you are located in building up the results structure.
Online reviews grew more valuable meanwhile Google Maps became part of the local search making page rankings see vast daylight. This brought about an even sharper focus, on Local SEO.
As smartphones went viral in 2015, Google tried to keep pace with the hottest trends. From that year forth, Google looked at mobile-friendly pages as a component for ranking. This meant sites had to be both optimized for mobile and loading time to be considered as one and the same to improve the mobile experience.
But most of the websites that were non-compliant got heavily de-ranked, thus showing Google their resolve. For websites with a brick-and-mortar existence, this was definitely doomsday.
RankBrain (2015)
The year 2015 also introduced the biggest algorithmic change: RankBrain.
With this upgrade, Google now pays more focus on user intent when results are displayed.
RankBrain specifically helps with unfamiliar queries by relating them to known ones. In that way, answers are always provided to users. To do this, the core update brought in machine learning as part of the algorithm. SEO practices, meanwhile, are more focused on responding to user needs and search intent.
Two years since the release of the core update Fred, it extended more to include sites with low quality rating aggregation or those performing black hat SEO. Black hat SEO is defined as those websites or pages within a website that attempt illegitimate techniques to secure high placement within the search results.
Sites who had joined the dark side of SEO, whether willingly or unwillingly, got punished. Not just with lost rankings, some were actually taken out of the Google index.
Mobile-first index (2018)
By 2018, it was an obvious choice that mobile search would take over desktop search. So, Google changed its way and put the spotlight on the mobile version of the website instead of the usual desktop page.
That meant sites not built for mobile search naturally lagged behind in the SERP. Speed, design, and access are all parts most hurt by SEO.
EAT (2019) / EEAT (2022)
The next year, Google threw in three other big factors to its mix: experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
That is what brought about the factors known as EAT. The purpose was (and still is) to gauge the quality of content and whether or not it benefits users. Thus, for content creators to have their content appear in search results, they must:
Verify the expertise of the author.
Share their data with trusted sources.
Build user trust by providing your contact information and verified content.
In 2022, another letter joined the acronym: "Expertise". This denotes that Google will take into consideration the expertise of recognized experts in a particular field or subject area and incorporate professional information when ranking content.
BERT (2019) and Core Web Vitals (2021) Two core updates were released in 2019 to bring the Google algorithm closer to the human brain. BERT. And Core Web Vitals in 2021.
BERT processes queries as sentences and not as words, therefore greater accuracy. On the other hand, Core Web Vitals is more about the user experience. Other factors are also considered among metrics such as LCP (Large Content Paint), CLS (Layout Cumulative Shift), and FID (First Input Delay).
The biggest update to the Google algorithm is the Useful Content Initiative in 2022. With this core update, the real value that a page delivers to users becomes the top factor in ranking a page.
Content creation focuses mainly on answering specific user problems with relevant and direct information. EEAT is rising in value plus interactive elements, questions, and info that is useful to users.
Beginning in 2022, Google will roll out several core updates that take the same approach as earlier ones. In simple terms, these updates are part of Google’s efforts toward a long-term goal to serve relevant and useful content to users, thereby improving specific search intents.
Then check our write-up about Google’s most important core changes.
Modern Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Focus on User Experience
SEO isn’t what it used to be. Various updates by Google are based on human search habits to enhance its already ultra-precise and high-quality service. At least, that’s what Google says.
Google now prefers to find websites whose content is relevant, up-to-date, and informative. So, SEO covers not only the search engines but also the users.
Present-day SEO is based mostly on search intent to find out which content satisfies the needs of the visitors to a website, i.e., what information is valuable for users. In most cases, search queries fall under the following types: informational, academic, transactional, and others. For these to be answered fully, content should be made clear and specific—and useful above all.
Another pillar of modern SEO is the user experience plus content accessibility.
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