We’ve come a long way when it comes to search engine optimisation. Digital marketing is a constantly evolving and changing space, and SEO has shown a lot of growth over the years and new innovations have been introduced. In fact, it’s reported that Google changes it’s algorithm up to 600 times a year! Marketers have had to constantly adapt to search engine changes in order to produce the best results. With new changes being introduced all the time, there’s been no slow in the pace at which marketers need to adapt – it’s our job to stay on our toes!

Curious to know how far we’ve come? Read on below to find out more about how SEO practices have evolved over the years.

Changes to our mindset

SEO used to be very focused on page ranking and single keyword usage and optimisation on a page. This has evolved over time, marketers are now more interested in approaching SEO with return on investment at top-of-mind and have a focus on how users actually engage with a brand, products or services. SEO is now optimised around user intentions and behaviours. This much more holistic approach to search engine optimisation has proved very effective and fits with Google’s intense focus on user experience. It is nowadays more important for content to be written naturally and with humans in mind, rather than robots. Content needs to be genuinely useful. Practices like keyword stuffing are in this way now strongly discouraged.

Also read: Best Ways to Develop SEO to Beat Your Customers

Keywords

The biggest change when it comes to keywords is that it’s no longer about targeting a singular keyword anymore. When we conduct keyword research, marketers now look more closely at the search intent of users. For SEO, long-tail keywords have become much more important as there is much more search intent behind them. Specialists are now trying to understand the search behaviours and intents of their users to help anticipate their needs and write content optimised to meet requirements. It’s now well understood that a huge portion of traffic comes from long tail keywords, so it’s important to conduct effective keyword research and find and optimise for the best keywords.

We now have a much stronger focus on conversion rates and user metrics rather than purely on traffic numbers as well.

Content

Previously it was common to write content purely for search engine rankings, with little to no regard for the actual quality or relevance of the content. It was common for a single keyword to be chosen and stuffed into an article, with no thought as to whether sentences and structure naturally flowed, or whether the content actually solved or related to any problem. This has been remedied with a much more intense focus on content being genuinely useful to readers. Content is now written with audience top of mind and focuses on producing a better user experience.

Link Building

Spammy link building practices used to be the order of the day. It used to be a common practice to build backlinks with spammy practices and poor quality sites, but this practice usually results in negative repercussions now. Google punished poor link building practices, so it’s important for specialists to build links with quality sites nowadays. These quality links are usually acquired form genuine relationship building, or through high quality monitored directories.

These are just a few of the important ways that search engine optimisation practices have changed and evolved over time. New changes that have been introduced are improving user experience and eliminating old black-hat practices that negatively impacted the quality of the online content available on the web.