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Keeping Up With Changes in SEO

What you know about changes with SEO

By Sasha McGregorPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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Keeping Up With Changes in SEO
Photo by Merakist on Unsplash

Although the landscape of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly changing to keep up with technological advancements as well as changes to Google's algorithm and such, there are few basic aspects of the field which will remain the same for quite some time. SEO is founded on only a few basic principles that do not seem to be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. The basics of SEO can be broken down into four concise terms: Crawlability, structure, keywords, and backlinks.

SEO experts have referred to these four simple concepts to establish powerful SEO efforts for years and they still hold up, to this day, despite a seemingly indefinitely changing career field. It would also be beneficial to check out a SEO ebook to learn even more. The following are in-depth explanations of each of the top SEO factors.

1. Crawlability

While content is indeed king, in regard to SEO, if Google cannot find content, no traffic will be driven to websites. This makes any SEO effort virtually redundant. Thus, the crawlability of content is among the basic building blocks of successful SEO. To find and therefore crawl and then rank content in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), Google and other search engines must be able to, first, access the content or at the very least those pages which are wished to be ranked in a SERP. Second, search engines must be able to read content. These two steps are primarily technical chores, however, they play strongly into the second core value of establishing powerful SEO.

2. Structure

A website's structure, in short, is simply a hierarchy of content prioritized based on relevant importance. While at first, it may seem that every page of a website is of equal importance, this idea can shoot any SEO effort in the foot, right out of the gates. Failing to prioritize a website's content will, furthermore, dilute more significant pages and content. Basically, when Google and other search engines see a particular page more often than others, it assumes that page is more important than the others, especially if that page is linked to from every other page, such as a link to a homepage within navigation menus, for example. Less important pages must still be linked to somewhere in order for a search engine to crawl and read it, however, they do not have to be linked to as often or frequently nor as close to the website's homepage. Google's ultimate endgame is to save users time and energy, eliminating steps and raising the quality of the typical user experience. Therefore, search engines should be able to tell which pages of a website are most important just by examining its properly prioritized and hierarchical structure.

3. Keywords

After a website is properly structured and its content can be accessed to crawl, search engines need to know what that content is, essentially, about. This helps them to understand which user search queries a page is most relevant to. Keywords literally tell search engines what a page's content is all about and helps it rank the page accordingly. Back in the day, SEO experts would use specific keywords repeatedly, but this created a rather uncomfortable experience for users, so Google eventually stopped ranking pages that offer a poor, overall user experience. Google looks, instead, for keywords that answer questions which users might have about a particular topic, use terminology common to the average user, and use the keywords in ways that Google perceives actual users to use them. The latter is commonly called "user intent" or "searcher intent." Only one keyword should be targeted per page, along with optional "secondary keywords," which relate directly back to the primary. Many people focus on far too many keywords in an attempt to cover a wider range of subjects, but this is counterproductive and will not rank a page well with Google. Instead, it is better to separate different angles of a specific topic among various pages.

4. Backlinks

When other, authoritative websites link to a page it helps establish that page's reputation to Google. The more respected a site page is by other reputable websites the higher value Google places on that page. When Google examines a page's backlinks, it is doing the same thing as humans when we read reviews or testimonials. Not all backlinks are treated equally though. Each is ranked, individually, based on Google's evaluation of the linking site's quality and established authority. Backlinks can be categorized into four basic types:

1. Contextual: For local and niche sites.

2. Expert: For well-known and highly trustworthy sites.

3. Popular: For pages with many different backlinks from many different sites.

4. Negative: Links considered spam, click-bait and simply garbage.

Backlinks can also be bought but Google frowns upon this tactic for link-building. Bought links are typically considered poor-quality, will not positively affect page rank and have even been penalized by Google in the past.

These four basic principles compose the theory of SEO. In order to make it work, however, proper tactics must be used and that is where SEO changes the most. Google and other top search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and rules based on those four concepts to better utilize information and rank content on a webpage, therefore, SEO practices must follow suit and adapt to these changes.

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