Earlier 00s and late 90s SEO was quite simple. Just some keywords and Metatags anyone could get a rank 1 but in 2003, the first death of SEO when Google focused on hidden text and hidden links. It was the time when Google introduced ‘the Florida and the Cassandra’ updates after the first publically announced update in 2002 which destroys the SEO tactics of 90s but start a new era of search engine optimization.
Now it’s a time of targeting tactics. link exchanges, Directory submission and article directories are the main tactics which help webmasters to rank higher with minimal efforts. With Brandy update, Google introduced a massive index expansion, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), the concept of link “neighborhoods and increased attention to anchor text relevance.
In 2005, With launching of personalized search and mobile web, the overall game was changed. Now seo meaning was the another, focused on personal browser and users’ web histories. Later 2007, 2008, and 2010, everything depends on Your previous results, social signals from Facebook and Twitter.
In 2011 with one more death of SEO, once again everything destroyed with the launch of Panda Update, Its affected 12% of Google search results officially but actual is more than it. Webmasters lost a lot of traffic and many site penalized like Overstock.com and JCPenney for the black hat SEO tactics. Thin content, bad experience to users, spam, content farms, scrapers, and websites with a high ad-to-content ratio penalized and degraded.
Now SEO is the tough task and difficult to tell exactly where you rank because search results are different for different users for same keywords. You can be rank 1 for one and rank 12 for another for the same keyword because everything depends on new signals of ranks.
During 2012,13 and 14, with various updates of Panda and Penguin All of the previous tactics were dying and SEO was becoming the more challenging but new tactics are born like Knowledge Graph, Social signals, Data Markup, semantic-search, Long Tail Keywords etc.
But SEO is Still Alive:
Seo never die. It changes. if one SEO technique is died another is born. With the changes of time, google emphasis on quality to its users from the crowd. It’s all about an algorithm and it cannot be 100% accurate.
SEO in 2015 and ready for next update
Seo in 2015, become more challenging. Now everything is changed and its a time for apply tactics not only for now but also to prevent yourself from next change of Algorithm.
Google Plus signals: Google emphasis on google plus in search results and it will be the life saver for you when next algorithm will introduce. So focus more on Google plus rather than other social networks to gain organic traffic from google search.
Optimize for mobile traffic: At the later of 2015, The mobile traffic will exceed to the desktop traffic.
Change link strategy: Now focus on the earning links on a high-quality relevant website is valuable rather than building links on irrelevant sites. It is time consuming but proved and provide gains forever.
Long Tail Keywords: Emphasis on long tail keywords and semantic keywords.
High Quality content with added value: Content is always king. It’s a time of original and high-quality content which added value to users, for rank higher in search results.