HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED ?

1. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Andre Hospidales SEO Social Geek Ltd.

2. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Understanding Search Engine Optimization Just as building a beautiful storefront is not the only factor that will result in sales for your business, online marketing involves much more than creating a gorgeous website. Sure, having a well-designed website that users find fast and easy to use is extremely important. However, in order for your business to succeed, your customers and prospective customers must be able to find you online when searching for the products or services you sell. Studies have shown that more people are likely to get to a particular website from search engines than any place else. Consequently, if your customers and prospects are unable to find you online, they will be doing business with your competitorsinstead. The fact of the matter is, if you're doing business on the web, SEO needs to be a strategic component of your overall internet marketing strategy. Essentially, the ultimate goal of SEO is to generate high quality leads by delivering a consistent flow of "targeted traffic"to a specificwebsite. This is the kind of traffic that tends to lead to increased sales or conversions, and boosts businessprofitability. www.seosocialgeek.com 2

3. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is part of a larger umbrella of marketing called search engine marketing(SEM). Marketing is the process of connecting, engaging, and influencing your potential customers to buy from you, being able to earn their loyalty and building your brand within the marketplace. Search engine marketing, on the other hand, is the process of generating qualified leads and increased visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts. Search Engine Marketing can happen in two key ways.  SEO: SEO is a structured, process-driven business strategy that is used to secure a high-ranking placement for a particular web page or site in organic search results so that you are more visible to users who are searching for the products and services you sell online.  Paid search: Paid search will provide the fastest return on investment. It’s fast to setup, easy to test, and you’ll generate traffic to your site pretty quickly. The most typical form of paid search is pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Examples of PPC marketing include Google AdWords, Social ads (such as Pinterest promoted posts, Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads) and Bing ads. The merits of using SEO in online marketing include:      High popularity and visibility Top ranking in search engine results Improved traffic Online branding Boost in online sales www.seosocialgeek.com 3

4. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Take a moment to think about the search terms someone might use when searching for your business. For example, if you’re a photographer in Northampton that offers boudoir as part of your range of photography services, possibilitiescould include:    boudoir photography northampton northampton boudoir photo studio makeover studio northampton Now, search Google for those terms. Does your businessshow up? If not, SEO is how you get there. If you have a website and your business does not show up in the search results when your potential customers are searching for it is just the same as customers searching for a restaurant but driving right past without seeingit. www.seosocialgeek.com 4

5. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED SEO Isn’t Dead; It Has Evolved At this point, it is important to understand how SEO has evolved over the past few years. Google search is now powered by semantic search, and an SEO strategy that may have worked well in the past is no indicator of SEO success today. In the old days, SEO was a standalone, purely technical skill that revolved around two primary constants: keywords and links. Keywords were critically important to establish relevance to a search query, whilst links were needed to help the website rise in the search rankings. Although this is an oversimplification of the Google search ranking process, it is safe to say that keywords and links were the main drivers of SEO in the past. This made it relatively easy to game the system. Black hat SEO’s with deep pockets were able to outrank websites on Google fairly quickly by purchasing hundreds or even thousands of aged domainsto create massive blog networks. These blogs provided no value whatsoever to the consumer, and were typically filled with meaningless, keyword-rich content to generate artificial links to the money site using anchor text over-optimization techniques. This type of black hat SEO strategy was so successful that there was a three to five year period when networks of this nature were used to virtually dominate the Google front page. And all of this was entirely possible because SEO was a technically-driven, standalonediscipline. With the release of the Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird algorithm updates, Google fundamentally transformed the SEO process. The Hummingbird update in particular was not just a regular update like previous updates before it. In fact, it was a complete restructuring of the Google ranking algorithm that incorporated all of the most powerful updates before it, including Panda and Penguin. www.seosocialgeek.com 5

6. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED The Hummingbird algorithm introduced semantic search with Google+ at its core, and this has transformed SEO into a socially-driven and complex amalgamation of processes. As a result, massive blog networks that were designed for the express purpose of manufacturing links are no longer effective on Google. The search ranking algorithm now uses artificial intelligence when analysing websites, and it uses a variety of factors including lack of genuine human engagement to identify manufactured links, elaborate link building schemes and manipulativeblog networks. Furthermore, with the incorporation of Google+ into Search, Google now requires everyone who uses their network to establish a visible and verifiable online identity. This requirement has made it virtually impossible for spam and black hat SEO strategies to thrive on Google as was the case in the past. And while there's still a few black hat "success" stories out there, those that work are either extremely expensive or short lived. Relationships are now at the heart of the Google search process. The fact of the matter is, in the new SEO, you could have a perfectly optimized website with relevant content and hundreds of thousands of backlinks, and still be nowhere to be found in the Google search results page for your target keywords! www.seosocialgeek.com 6

7. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED How Fundamentally Changed Google Search has It is very important to understand how the Google search process has changed. In fact, some SEO techniques that were perfectly acceptable in the past has resulted in sites (including well established brands) being penalized and even de- indexed. www.seosocialgeek.com 7

8. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Keywords In the old world of SEO, Google was keyword-driven: keywords in your URL structure, your metadata, your content, your links, etc. It was all about identifying the exact search terms that your target audience were most likely to type, and then getting your site to rank as highly as possible for those terms. Relevance was established by looking for pages that have been optimized for the keywords used in a search query. Today, although keyword research is still important for SEO, Google search is topic or theme-driven, and no longer relies on keywords to establish relevance to a search query. Rather, semantic search uses artificial intelligence to understand the searcher’s intent and the “contextual” meaning of keywords being searched for. It considers the entire query as a whole and then identifies the most “contextually relevant” results for the search query, effectively moving from keyword-based searchesto context-orientedsearches. Being theme-driven, Google’s algorithm is now better able to find and return the "most relevant" web pages to a particular search query, even if a particular web page does not contain keywords used in the search query. Consequently, optimizing a web page for specific keywords are no longer effective in driving traffic if the algorithm deems that those keywords do not searcher'sintent. match the This means that pages can accrue traffic from dozens of keywords instead of just one or two. www.seosocialgeek.com 8

9. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Links Links are at the core of Google’s search algorithm, and link building is the most important off-page activity that can be used to increase the organic search ranking of your website. The concept of using links as a way to measure a site’s importance was first made popular by Google with the implementation of its PageRank algorithm. In simple terms, each link to a web page is considered a vote for that page, and the page with the most votes wins. The key to this concept is the notion that links represent an “editorial endorsement” of that web page, and search engines rely heavily on editorial votes to determine its relative importance. However, although Google considers links to be the best metric for site quality, link analysis involves much more than simply counting the number of links a web page or website has. All links are not created equal, and the number of links pointing to your site from socially popular, trusted and authoritative sites in your industry adds to your overall credibility, and increases the confidence that Google has in your website. www.seosocialgeek.com 9

10. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED The Link Signature Since the Penguin update, all links have been getting more and more algorithmic scrutiny. When analysing a link, Google looks closely at the link signature with a view to negating any attempted manipulation of its algorithm through links that have been acquired in a non-organicway. Even links from an established, high ranking site could be discounted if the algorithm is unable to understand the connection with the site it is linking to. In fact, Google will penalize the high ranking site if it suspects that the site has been selling links. It is really important to understand that, as far as Google is concerned, the process of link building itself is somewhat manipulative. Google views links as votes for your site’s credibility, vouching for your worthiness to rank highly in the search results. From this perspective, you can probably see why Google maintains that links to a particular site must be “earned, not built”. This was echoed by Google's webmaster trends analyst, John Mueller, in February when he warned that you shouldn’t be building links to your site. Now, Google is not naïve enough to think that webmasters are never going to build links to their sites. However, the fact remains that you need to be subtle and take extra care when building links. And this means avoiding any overt link building practices that could lead Google to conclude that you’re manufacturing your popularity. All things being equal, the actual amount of links you need in order to rank highly in the Google search results will very much depend on the backlink profile of the competitors that are currently ranking above you in your industry-relevant SERP (search engine results page). www.seosocialgeek.com 10

11. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED What is an Entity? An “entity” is defined as a person, place or thing (such as a company, blog or website) that has a number of connections associated with it. Google is transforming the search process from universal search results to a more intelligent semantic model that uses structured data to understand "real-world entities" and the connections between them. Google’s Link Graph is a record of the link profile of every indexed website linking to others and being linked to in turn. As Google continues to index and organize everything online, it needs to identify and understand the various entities on the web, who those entities are linked to, and their relationship to one another. If you’ve recently received a massive spurt of links to your site, the algorithm will want to understand the connection between your site and those “entities” that are suddenly linking to you:  What is the digital identity of the entities that are linking to you?  Why are they linking to you?   Did you publish a great piece of content that went viral? Have you had somemedia exposure? Note that Google will always analyze the authority, quality and originality of the content that is used to generate links to your site. If the quality is poor, this may be considered a clear indication of link buying because no one voluntarily links to bad content. www.seosocialgeek.com 11

12. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Social Signals Social signals serve as recommendations (or votes) cast by consumers. A social signal is generated every time a user likes or shares a particular piece of content, adds a comment,+1's a post, or tweets a link. A slew of social signals to your content indicates that consumers believe the information shared on the page provides good value. Social media is extremely important as a ranking signal because the search engines consider your authority and influence on social networks and the level of engagement your content receives. Each signal is an indication to the search engines that your target audience considers your content to be of high-quality. Note however, that social signals now get algorithmic scrutiny, and Google will also look at a variety of metrics as a means of verifying the authenticity of your social signals. Some of the factors that Google takes into account when evaluating social signals include:       How does the user interact with your website? Does she mention it to her social connections? Does she share any of its content after her first or subsequentvisits to it? Does she return to the site frequently or at all? What type of personal digital profile does the user have? Is the user known for that type of content or is that content irrelevant with what she does online generally? www.seosocialgeek.com 12

13. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Keep in mind that Google has a treasure trove of data on each of its users, and it will use this data to verify the authenticity and trustworthiness of the social signal. Google uses Google+ as a primary source of information to gather all this data, but it also uses other data sources to cross-reference everything in an effort to flesh out the “identity” behind the social signal. All of this data is then used to calculate a digital reputation score with the intent to gauge how much the social signal can be trusted. www.seosocialgeek.com 13

14. HOW SEO HAS EVOLVED Today, Google prioritizes the quality of business offerings, the online visitor experience and the perceived reputation and authority of a particular business itself as much as it focuses on the traditionally technical aspects of search engine optimization. This means if you are looking to generate leads organically on Google search, you need to have a process-driven digital marketing strategy that goes beyond the Google search query box. A successful SEO strategy is one that is not purely reliant on just keywords and backlinks, but incorporates the followingkey strategies:  On page SEO.  TechnicalSEO.  Brand marketing.  Content marketing.  Social media optimization.  Mobile search optimization.  Online reputation management.  Video search optimization.  App search optimization.  Relationship building.  Link building.  User engagement.  Keyword optimization.  On-pageoptimization. www.seosocialgeek.com 14