web development

Over the past few years and before the huge changes and updates in SEO, when users were searching for a topic, they might come across low-quality websites that did not meet their needs, but because of the relevant updates in SEO, low quality websites were identified quickly and high-quality ones replaced them, so that the user could come up with the right websites which met their needs faster.

That is why SEO is one of the most effective ways of marketing and all these referrals are due to its frequent updates.

You must be familiar with the meaning and concept of SEO and you know that all the activities that are being done to optimize a website is called SEO, which ultimately leads to a high website ranking on the Google search results page.

The great importance of SEO has caused it to be frequently updated, and due to the efforts made in the field of improving it, big changes have been taken place which we will discuss in the following.

Big changes in SEO over the past years:

- Improving the quality of content:

Over time, users were repeatedly come across duplicate and low quality content, some of which overused keywords in order to attract Google"s attention.

One of the big changes in Google was the introduction of the Panda algorithm , which was created to recognize short, low quality, low value content, so that users would be received engaging and rich content in search results.

After the introduction of the Panda algorithm, people who produced quality content using science and knowledge were successful, and people who only wanted to produce short content with lots of keywords were definitely penalized by Google.

- More websites become mobile-friendly:

Given that nowadays most people spend a lot of time throughout the day on their mobile phones, so if they have a question, they quickly use their mobile phones to search on it.

In the past, most websites were not accessible on mobile phones, and there may still some websites that are not optimized for being used on this device, in which case the website owner have to try their best to optimize their websites for mobile devices, because today Google pays more attention to the websites that are suitable for being used on mobile phones and rewards them by giving a higher ranking on the search results page .

Briefly, the Friendly Mobile algorithm caused website designers to design mobile-compatible websites, so that the user can use the most accessible tool which is mobile phone, to enter a website without any error, and spend a lot of time on it.

-Increasing the value of website loading speed on mobile for ranking:

Due to the high use of mobile phones by users, one of the changes in SEO is the introduction of Mobile Speed algorithm, which is effective in ranking websites by considering the speed of them on the mobile phones, and helps SEO experts to update all aspects of the website.

- Decreasing the value of external linking:

In the past, SEO experts tried to be successful in a short period of time by using methods contrary to the rules of SEO, for instance, using black hat SEO , which is a set of activities that are against the rules which are being done to reach a high ranking in search engines in a short time by manipulating the search engine algorithms, which are not approved by search engines and the website may be penalized or removed from the list of databases.

One of the things that was being done in black hat SEO was to use unnatural and unrelated links, which its only purpose was to get Google"s attention as soon as possible, then to prevent this, the penguin algorithm aims to identify unnatural links and spamming them was introduced, this algorithm pays a lot of attention to website linking and tries to penalize such websites by examining contents which contain irrelevant backlinks and irrelevant content to the keywords.

- Change in local searches:

Another big change that was made in Google was the introduction of the Pigeon algorithm, which changed the meaning of local searches generally, in fact, the Google Pigeon algorithm helps you to reach your desire as quickly as possible according to your location, for example, suppose you search for the phrase “the restaurant closest to me”, as a result, all the restaurants near you are available for you.

By introducing this algorithm, Google paid more attention to better optimized websites and gave them a better ranking in the search engine results page.

- High performance of social networks:

The availability of mobile has led to social networking as an available tool for users and more attention to sites that have a social network.

This big change in SEO caused us to look for social network optimization initially for optimizing a website

- Change in Google awareness level:

Due to the frequent changes in SEO and the algorithms that are presented annually, the level of google awareness has significantly improved, in other words, the search engine tries to give closer answers to the searcher"s question.



One of the algorithms that revolutionized SEO was the RankBrain algorithm , which optimizes search results based on user behavior. Two factors, Dwell Time and Click-Through Rate, are important for this algorithm. In fact, Google"s artificial intelligence algorithm considers that if a user spends a lot of time on a page, it is more likely for the content to meet the needs of users as a result of the website valuable content.

As a result, this page can get a better ranking in Google results , and if it happens frequently, Google will rank websites with these features higher in the results page of Google search engine.

Google now ranks websites faster and more optimized.

- Reduce the importance of keywords in the title and meta descriptions:

With the introduction of the Hummingbird algorithm, which is so named because of the two characteristics of speed and accuracy in hummingbirds, Google was able to interpret the phrase that the user searches and provide the best results related to the searched term.

This algorithm is a new update that gives this message to SEO experts to try to find information about the user"s purpose of the search instead of overusing keywords.

- Reduce boring ads:

SEO experts got used to place a lot of ads on the site, which was prevented by the introduction of the Page layout algorithm, so that the user would not face too much advertising. In other words, it is actually like a brake that works when website owners want to place more ads that causes user fatigue and confusion and creates a negative user experience.

- Giving chance to all sites:

Another change that was made in SEO with the introduction of the Dance algorithm , which works in such a way that it randomly selects websites that are not in the top rankings and brings them closer to its first pages to give the website that does not have a high ranking a chance, and of course after a while if the website is not successful and does not gain attract positive feedback from users, Google will take it back to its previous ranking, but if it can attract Google"s positive opinion due to people"s clicks on the website, the website will reach a high rank.

This algorithm allows websites to show their quality and reach the position they deserve.

- Fear of falling behind in updates:

SEO has changed a lot in recent years, which has led site owners to think of the next change in SEO and whether they will lose their ranking with the next change that occurs in SEO or not.

This has made site owners to frequently update their content, website and fix existing bugs, so that they do not lose their ranking because of the next change in SEO.

Last word:

According to this article, we conclude that SEO is changing frequently and all websites should update their SEO in order to gain a high ranking on the search results page or maintain their high ranking, so we will reach the conclusion that SEO progress has lots of advantages and has become better compared to the past version.

Source: https://www.dotnek.com/Blog/Web/big-seo-changes-in-the-last-few-years