The Evolution Of SEO With The Ever Evolving Google Algorithm

Search engine optimization basically is the process to optimize your website to the standard required by the search engine, Google in most cases, so that the search engine would rank your website and show it to the online users as one of the most relevant results. 

The position of your website on search engine result pages is known as your website rank. Each page has 10 position and the ideal place for your website to be is among the top 10. The higher you rank, the more visibility and exposure your website will get.

What I Need to Know About SEO?

Google has been updating its search algorithm almost every day. There is always a minor update ready once or twice a week to be implemented. After that, once every few years Google drops a bombshell of an update to mark new changes in its algorithm. Now for SEO experts in Australia, it is quite the task to keep themselves updated with the algorithm updates in order to carry out a seamless SEO progress.

Back in the day when Google was not as smart as it is now, the only factors Google considered to rank a website was their domain names, and the use of keywords in the content. Then came the day when Google’s algorithm came into existence where the system was to track and rank a website based on the relevancy of the patterns of hyperlinks. Now, instead of using text to determine relevance, search engine would determine the relevancy of a page based on a numerical value of links rooted in its HTML and by external links to the page, this algorithm update eventually came to known as PageRank, one of the most major Google updates back in the day.

Now, PageRank, which was the one major ranking factor, is part of more than 200 ranking factors. That is all thanks to all the major updates Google has released from time to time to evolve its search algorithm.

Recommended read: 6 Easy Plastic Surgeon SEO Tips You Can Use to Be Successful

Google has kept the trend of releasing such updates every 2-3 years, where certain updates are quite easy to follow while others came in and disrupted the way of things.

Google Updates

• Panda

• The first of many major updates from Google to its algorithm. The Panda update. This one came in and changed how website content was written and the use of keywords. Before this stuffing keywords was the easiest way to rank your website on such keywords. Because of that website owners did not give much thought about their audience rather than getting their website ranked. This update targeted every website that stuffed keywords inside the content and website that covered relevant content for the audience received major boost.
• RELEASE DATE FEB 24^th 2011

• Venice

• Venice came in second after Panda. This update was not about penalizing irrelevant and spammy websites but it was to show search results more close to your location as Google understood that the user usually wants to look for things that are near to their location.
• RELEASE DATE FEB 27^th 2012

• Penguin

• Penguin was another ground-breaking update from Google. This one targeted any website that acquired spammy backlinks to their website. Back in the day in order to increase their “votes” (backlinks), people used to build links anywhere and everywhere without giving much thought to the relevancy. Penguin targeted any website that acquired spammy backlinks through link generators or spamming on comments. This gave birth to more quality and relevant backlinking.
• RELEASE DATE APRIL 24^th 2012

 • EMD

• The exact match domain update that was released after some people found a bug in the Google algorithm where using a primary keyword for your domain name allowed you to rank faster on your keywords. This update made the domain name irrelevant when it came to ranking, all you have to do now is choose a name that is relevant to the business.
• RELEASE DATE SEPT 2012

• Hummingbird

• Fifth and the very first AI update of Google. The Hummingbird update penalized not only keyword stuffing but also sites whose content could be determined as low quality. Hummingbird allowed Google to rank a website based on the quality of their content, the relevancy and the right use of keywords. This was a major step towards showing search results based on search intent. After this long-tailed keywords became more relevant and important
• RELEASE DATE AUG 22^nd 2013

• Pigeon

• The sixth of the lot increased the importance of local search results and made some changes to Google maps and how businesses appear there.
• RELEASE DATE JULY 24^th 2014

• Mobile

• Mobile update or the Mobilegeddon update from Google signified the importance of mobile responsiveness. Google understood that mobile searches have increased significantly and demanded website owners to have mobile responsive versions.
• RELEASE DATE APRIL 21^st 2015

• RankBrain

• Eighth and the second AI update from Google, RankBrain.

RankBrain is a machine learning system that gives Google the

power to comprehend the meaning behind search queries, allowing it to deliver the most relevant results for those queries. This is by far the most important ranking factor right now. As it stands now, RankBrain is the core update of Google algorithm

RELEASE DATE OCT 26^th 2015

• BERT

• BERT is the latest Google AI update that will work alongside RankBrain. This will affect almost 10% of all Google searches and search results. This focuses on search intent in a very similar way to RankBrain.
• RELEASE DATE DEC 9^th 2019

These above mentioned updated from Google have completely revolutionized website creation, SEO and browsing experience, for the better I must add. And still it is evolving continuously.

What Else There Is In SEO

On Page SEO

On-Page means to work on the website and build it as per the Google algorithm guidelines. This will ensure that your website is ranked on relevant searches by Google. Below are some things that are very important for on-page SEO

• Title tags
• Header tags
• Content
• UI/UX
• URLs
• Website Structure
• Technical fixes
• Alt image tags

Most of these factors revolve around the content of the website while the rest is all about the website structure. Your website content determines if your website will be ranked by Google. The quality of the content and relevancy and content optimization is very important. That said, all that will be possible if your website’s structure is on-point.

Off Page SEO

Off page is the part where you work to build the image and authority of your website outside the domain of your website. That means acquiring quality backlinks. This backlinking strategy includes.

1. Linking the site’s popularity
2. The relevance of the link with regards to the website’s topic
3. How “fresh the link is
4. Use of anchor text
5. Number of different links on the linking page and how trustworthy they are
6. Authority of the website and page you have linked your website on

Relevance, authority and trustworthiness are still considered important among the SEO community even though the landscape of website SEO has been changing a lot recently.

What Else Is there In SEO

SEO is ever evolving and there are certain things that you need to be aware of.  Below are some very important things that are getting very popular and may change how SEO is performed in future.

Voice search has become a very important SEO and ranking factor nowadays. Websites optimized better for voice searches will always get ranked better than those that are not. A good suggestion would be to use FAQs in your web content.

Apart from that, the best you can do is keep yourself aware of the latest changes and keep track of how Google is evolving. 

General FAQs