Back then and today – How the SEO game has changed

It's official. The SEO game has changed. That's the word in a new and ever-evolving world of search. Things are even changing so fast it's hard to keep up. We're no longer living in a world where we can easily grasp what SEO is all about, because it’s constantly shifting. We grasp one new reality – like the importance of local search – and another pops up right behind it. It can feel impossible to keep up – and yet we must keep up.

What SEO used to be

When looking at the evolution of something, it's good to start by looking - at least briefly - at what used to be. In the world of search engine optimisation, this is a relatively short period of time, but one that is packed with updates, changes and rethinking. In the early days of search engine optimisation, search was all about keywords. Webmasters stuffed their sites with keywords, confident that this practice would get their sites to the top of the search engine results pages. Then Google came along and turned search on its head. Their refined algorithms prioritised quality over keyword stuffing. Suddenly SEO professionals were talking about backlinks and content and things like that... ... And then the algorithms changed again. Local search became the topic - and then mobile search queries surpassed desktop search queries and Mobilegeddon happened. Now SEO professionals were confronted with a range of new search options.

Five new search trends to remember

SEO is no longer just for Google – or for Bing and Yahoo. In fact, most of the major changes in SEO have nothing to do with search engines, or at least not the search engines we're used to. SEO still stands for Search Engine Optimisation, but new search options and technologies require new types of optimisation. This is what you need to know.

Mobile search

First and foremost is mobile search. If you're thinking, „Wait a minute, Mobilegeddon already happened! Why do I need to worry about mobile search?“ then you should pay attention – because things have changed. When we think about mobile search now, we're not talking about using Google on your phone. In fact, mobile search has become so commonplace in that sense that it's hardly worth mentioning. In the US, more than 70 % of total internet usage sorted over the phone!

The thing is, though, most of the time we spend online on our phones isn't spent using traditional search engines like Google. In fact, we spend 92 % AD with mobile apps – and that presents a real SEO challenge. Originally, the only in-app search option available was Spotlight. Now there are many options – and while some were originally designed only for GPS, they have since expanded to cover general geographic searches. Google Maps also plays a role in many mobile search queries. This makes sense when you consider how much information a single Google Maps listing contains.

Voice search and personal assistants

Only a few years ago, speech-to-text technology was uncommon. It existed, but it wasn't something people turned to when they wanted to search for something online. Now, the widespread adoption of digital assistants like Siri (the iPhone assistant) or Alexa (Amazon's market entry) has given the world of search – and search engine optimisation – a whole new dimension. And it's not just digital assistants – televisions, lamps, and other household items are all connected via the Internet of Things.

What does this mean for search? Well, for starters, Alexa doesn't even need keywords to give users what they want. A casual question like „Where should I go out to eat tonight?“ is enough to get a list of local restaurants. These digital assistants are intelligent enough to see past normal human language and understand what's being asked without keywords. These new search options extend search beyond our devices. They are activated by the sound of our voice and can take into account our personal history and past actions in order to give us the answers to our search queries.

Social search

Another major change in search engine optimisation is the way people are using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to search for content. When these sites were first launched, their search functions were basic and only intended to help users find their friends. Today, however, more and more people are using social search engines to find local businesses and services. They know that when they type local search terms into Facebook, for example, they will receive a list of businesses whose pages they can then view.

There has also been a shift, as it's now very easy to use social search to find content rather than brands. When you log in to Instagram, you'll find that the algorithms make recommendations based on your activity on the page. If you watch a lot of wildlife photos or travel to San Francisco frequently, those preferences will be reflected in the content Instagram recommends to you. If you use the right hashtags and descriptions, the algorithms can recommend your content to people who are most likely to visit your business.

Messenger Apps

Messenger apps like Facebook Messenger also play a role in search. If you've used Messenger recently, you'll have noticed that when you use certain words – for example, „song“ – you'll receive a message saying, „Find songs now.“ In other words, there's a built-in search engine working behind the scenes. There are messenger apps like Pegg, which offers financial services to small businesses and start-ups, and some companies are now deploying messenger bots to handle routine customer service queries. This is another example of casual, non-literal language being used to deliver search results in the moment. And it shows that anyone clinging to the old, keyword-centric SEO of the past is being left behind.

Thematic Cluster

Finally, we have the topic of topic clusters – a natural outcome of moving away from traditional keywords and towards casual and contextual search results based on natural language. Topic clusters require businesses to link pages with related topics together to give context and meaning to their content.

Instead of writing repetitive blog posts, create a cornerstone post on a specific topic and then build other posts and pages that link to (and from) that post to build your website's architecture. If done correctly, the result is a website specifically designed to understand user intent and allow them to jump from one related topic to another. This can boost your visibility in search engines and ultimately contribute to your business's growth.

Don't be intimidated by the changes in SEO...

These changes are good, as they offer the opportunity to move away from optimising for broken phrases and clunky keywords, and enter a future where human language and intent are recognised by search engines without the need for keywords. With a bit of luck, these trends will usher in a new era of content aimed at connecting users and businesses.