How SEO has evolved over past ten years. What are the consequences?
Post publisher describes how SEO has evolved over the past 10 years (you can read the article here.) The author refers to visitors behavior, SEO specialists methods or work, content marketing and social media. It appears that development of social media and content marketing rise highly depends on users’ needs and behavior. Apparently users spend more and more time online. SEO has evolved from link building to high quality content marketing and valuable websites.
SEO development and Google monopoly
Google has been called a monopolist for quite a time now. Back in 2007 Google search engine was only one of few options to choose from. Since, 2007 Google has been expanding. Finally, it reached a moment when SEO actions are to optimise websites for Google search engine only. Still, users throughout the world have more than Google to choose from. Yet, Google remains a monopolist in the global market. SEO actions still focus mainly on Google search engine.
The most popular queries in 2007
Ten years ago users queries were mostly short, few words phrases. Whereas this trend is still popular, nowadays there are no obstacles when it comes to typing multiple words queries or use very detailed descriptions and given brands and models names. Single word phrase doesn’t guarantee finding relevant information. Details are necessary.
For example in Poland the most often typed phrases were: games, allegro, maps and queries concerning singers or Winamp. Nowadays queries including social media channels names like Facebook or Twitter are gaining momentum.
SEO development and visitors behavior
Why websites compete over the top SERP ranks? To simplify – because top ranking websites are visited the most frequently. It’s all about the users. Users awareness has significantly increased over the years. Today they aren’t satisfied with mediocre results. Users pay attention to both website layout, page load time, easiness when it comes to navigation and content. There is no way for one person to take care of all these aspects, hence today’s SEO requires a few specialists to be effective. Website success depends on coordinated actions of a whole team. It’s worth to note that SEO team needs to adjust their actions because Google never wastes time and updates its algorithms all the time. Important ranking factors from the past are no longer valid today.
Financial settings
Financial model has also changed. In 2007 most of the customers paid for tangible results, that is given phrases ranks. Today SEO requires payment for performed actions, no matter the results. Payments are mostly done on a monthly basis. Finally, it’s not about top rankings but huge website traffic.
The death of SEO theories
SEO is evolving constantly and it seems that it won’t stop any time soon. The death of SEO theories appear constantly, but they are hugely exaggerated. Maybe, Google will find a way to stop manipulative actions all together, but for now simple limitations must be enough. Anyway SEO specialist work will continue to be interesting and challenging as the changes are introduced all the time.
