SEO and the Changing Google Algorithm

Much like raising children, SEO is a discipline where the playing field, and the rules, keep changing. It is one of the reasons that there is so much misinformation about it on the web, and one of the major reasons that people turn to SEO professionals to sort it all out. Today we check out how the game plan for SEO has changed over time, by exploring the changing Google algorithm. These rankings are a selected view of our personal opinions about internet marketing, including our observations about which activities get which results.

We’ll be looking at four major factors that Google uses to rank pages for a particular search query:

• Keyword usage on site, including keyword density, positioning, relative appearance next to related words, etc.
• Anchor text used in external links
• Link popularity – how many links of what level of ‘authority’ you have linking to your site
• Trust and authority of the domain hosting the page

2004 – Back in Aught-Four!

• Trust and authority: Only had a very slight impact on SEO rankings. Having a .gov or .edu domain probably would have helped relatively little in rankings.
• Keyword usage: Was of moderate importance in determining rankings
• Anchor text: Was very important in determining SERPs
• Link popularity: Was seen as the dominant force in determining the SERP

2007 – Back in Aught-Seven!

• Trust and authority: Was moving up in importance, we could now see a moderate impact
• Keyword usage: Again, of moderate importance
• Link popularity: Moderate importance – the top three factors had relatively equal weight
• Anchor text: However, was seen as immensely important by Google

2009 – Back to the Not So Distant Past

• Trust and authority: Our recent SEO projects have shown much better results for host domains with good trust and authority in Google’s eyes – it seems this is now of quite dominant importance.
• Keyword usage: Still has a moderate impact on internet marketing activities
• Anchor text: Still important, but not so much as it was a few years ago
• Link popularity: Currently this has the least effect on over all ranking of the four major factors.

This is all very interesting to note – but an important point to remember is that you shouldn’t neglect to use keywords in your achor text just because Google doesn’t care about it right now … those links will still be there in a couple of years when Google may have changed its mind. For the same reason, there’s still no excuse for neglecting on-site optimization or working on building link popularity as an internet marketing tactic.