Where SEO Was and Where it is Now

Search engine optimization has come a long way in the past five years. Today, SEO is all about how well you're connecting with visitors and engaging them on your site with relevant content that is similar to what they're searching for.

Let's take a look at where SEO was like years ago and compare it today...

To rise to the top of search engines five years ago, many "internet marketing experts" love doing shady practices to make the rankings jump temporarily. Black hat SEO is just putting a band-aid on one's marketing and devaluing the future of websites. Fortunately for internet marketers (like us) who believe in putting out quality for long-term results, we're finally getting rewarded big time from the search engines.

10 Years ago you could have fun throwing in a bunch of keywords all throughout your site for words you want to rank and it actually boosted your ranking quickly. Today, if you're overusing keywords, Google will flag you website, as well as penalize your site. Don't stuff your site with keywords! With the overused "content is king" phrase being thrown around by internet marketers quite a bit, it's true. The more content that is genuine and truly represents your company and what your business does, the more Google respects it and pushes your site ahead of competitors.

Looking back at SEO, photos and videos weren't given much power to help increase rankings at all. Today, everything has changed. Going forward, photos and videos count towards your SEO score more than ever before. With low competition search term keywords, you can create a video and if you optimize it right, you can rank the video (YouTube) in a matter of days. We have done this for many keywords and continue to do so.

In addition to video, social media is an integral part of search rankings now too. The more engagement you have on networks, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. the better your chances are for Google to pick up on that and move you ahead of your competitors. When on social media, focus on what you can consistently due to build your brand and amount of followers. You can use social media to sell, but it needs to be indirect selling. For every one "salesly" post, you should have five times more informational and engaging posts that is related to your brand, your company culture, company news, community involvement, etc.

We're excited that SEO is moving in the right direction and will continue to do so. More relevant searching across the web will yield better results for businesses who do it right. Better search engine marketing is also better for consumers too!