New Age of SEO
“When everybody else likes you, Google likes you” – This is SEO. Things have changed a lot in the last few years. Every 3-4 years, there’s a big shift or addition to the key metrics Google (and, to a lesser extent MSN/Bing and Yahoo!) uses to order competitive search results. More importantly there is a major shift in the web sphere itself.
SEO in 1996-1999:
- Digital Marketing was about SEO + Ads on different websites. (SEO -80%, Ads – 20%)
- SEO was On-page keyword usage + meta data
- SEO and ads could work mutually exclusively.
- Web was about information and used by limited people.
SEO 1999 – 2002:
- Digital Marketing was about SEO + PPC (Adwords) + Ads on different websites (SEO -70% – PPC -20%, Ads – 10%)
- SEO was PageRank (Links came into picture) + On-page
- SEO, PPC and ads could work mutually exclusively.
- Web was about a lot of information and search. A lot of consumers started using it.
SEO in 2002 – 2005: (Techshu team members started their journey here)
- Digital Marketing was about SEO + User content + PPC + Ads + Affiliate marketing etc (SEO – 50%, User Content – 20%, PPC – 20% – Ads & Others -10%)
- SEO was (More advanced algorithms) Anchor text + Domain name + PageRank + On-Page.
- SEO started integrating with user generated content (Campaigns, interaction) + also the PPC started picking up well, so it could be used to understand some stats.
- Web 2.0 came in, where the users started interacting on web.
SEO in 2005 – 2009: Domain authority + Diversity of linking domains + Topic modeling + Anchor text + Domain name + PageRank + On-Page
- Digital Marketing was about SEO + User content + Campaigns for Links (Link baiting) + PPC + Ads + Affiliate marketing etc etc (SEO – 40%, Web application (Syndication) -10%, User Content – 10%, PPC – 20%, affiliate -10% – Ads & Others -10%)
- SEO was (More advanced algorithms + many more signals) Anchor text + Domain name + PageRank + On-Page + Signals (People talking in gmail, how often the links are coming, link diversification etc)
- Signals from affiliate, PPC, conversation, traffic etc were becoming a part of SEO. Different campaigns for links, content generation etc started playing more role. Google attempted to capture human intelligence using their coop systems. SEO becoming more and more linked to other services like links through affiliate, paid ads etc. Another major part of reviews and local ranking (2008 was Google’s Local ranking year).
- Web moved from anonymity to identity. So people were communicating and adding more and more signals for the websites.
SEO In 2010 and 2011
(Year when the Web changes drastically, From Information to Entertainment, for once in a week to daily, Yeah of Social Media), we’ve already seen the entry of social signals from Facebook and Twitter. The recent clickstream stories revealed that both Google and Bing employ clickstream data.
- Digital Marketing is about Social Media + Campaigns + Video/Images/News (Universal search) + SEO + User content + Campaigns for Links (Link baiting) + PPC + Ads + Affiliate marketing etc etc (SEO – 20%, Social Media Marketing – 20%, Web application (Syndication) & FB apps -10%, User Content – 10%, PPC – 20%, affiliate -10% – Ads & Others -10%) (For bigger brands, we also suggest listening/brand monitoring services)
- SEO is capturing all possible signals for human conversation and web conversation. Now it is not about how many pages you have, it is about how these pages are getting created. Big change in SEO. The link building has changed drastically.
- It no more works the old way. The Panda update has further crucified the pure SEO work. SEO is only 20% of tradition SEO work, now rest 80% is about using other channels to get links and other signals.
- Web moved from information to entertainment, people want to talk about brands, now the campaigns and other work should support that.
SEO In 2012+ (AD and BC of Search Engine Algo)
- New Algo (Panda, Penguins) changed the way we used to do SEO as bad signals are not only ignored by also getting penalized. In last few months there is a paradigm shift towards how Google ranks the website. In fact, we can call it BC/AD kind of effect for the SEO world. Old methods are not effective any more. While working for smaller budget projects, it impacts the most as all companies employed easy link building methods for faster rankings (also known as submission links), which is no more effective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Penguin has more details. The old strategies are no more effective and new strategies are expensive.
- Focusing on Mobile, Web and Social is the key.