Why SEO in 2018 is Harder than it Was in 2017 and other Changes by Google
SEO and Google are a relationship every online marketer has their eyes on. Where Google goes, so does the entire search engine optimization industry. Throughout the past few years alone, Google has implemented numerous changes that has changed the way we do SEO. In some ways, things have gotten easier and in other ways, they’ve gotten a lot harder. SEO in 2018 is not the same beast it was last year. Needless to say, here are some of the updates we’ve had to adapt to.
Google has impacted numerous aspects of SEO-driven content production, release, and promotion. Today’s SEO by Google expects higher quality content with better spelling, grammar, and sentence structure than ever before. If Google’s bots pick up low quality content on your site, don’t expect it to make a positive difference towards where you place in the rankings. As Google’s algorithms have gone through updates over the years, the bar for quality has gone higher and higher.
In addition to the requirement of higher quality content, Google will reward sites that focus on having fewer high quality pages rather than a large amount of low quality pages. As SEO specialists, this has meant building longer, more effective, and more immersive content rather than simply producing dozens upon dozens of articles that lack meaning. Next on the list of changes instigated by Google is link building requiring higher quality links than ever before. The days of acquiring low quality links and expecting this strategy to work in ranking high is no longer appropriate.
There are three other key ways in which Google has changed the SEO game in the last couple years. The sites built with a user experience that is more immersive, trendy, and easy to use are ranking higher than the more basic alternatives. Secondly, Google promoting SEO as an effective way to gain traffic has also meant an influx of competition using content marketing to gain eyes. That means an increased difficulty in ranking high, subsequently making it nearly impossible in some categories to rank #1. Thirdly, little things such as advertisement placements, the implementation of voice search, mobile responsiveness, and more are all playing a more fundamental role in ranking on Google than ever before.
Needless to say, rankings are never permanent on Google, Bing, and other search engines. To maintain rankings, one must continue to utilize search engine optimization strategies that are targeted and effective. SEO is always a pursuit, even in times of high search placement and achievement.
Remember, techniques that work today are never guaranteed to work in the future. If you’re overseeing a website, take note of patterns in traffic today compared to the patterns from last year and the year before. It’s likely there are some changes. Perhaps organic traffic has increased or decreased, perhaps where leads are being generated has changed, and/or perhaps there are no discernible changes. For certain sites, SEO has changed a lot more than it has for other sites.
As SEO specialists, we always have an eye on Google updates and where SEO is headed next. Visit Unlimited Exposure today to speak with a representative. Using results-driven strategies, we produce the greatest ROI for our clients, ensuring their marketing is up to the highest standard.
