And yet, search engine optimisation (SEO), once the biggest buzz word in the industry, appears to be floundering since Google’s 2011 Panda update.
Here’s a quick rundown of Panda: in
a bid to make search results more rich (original content), more fair, and more difficult to game, Google altered its search algorithm, downgrading the importance of incoming links while adding a few key variables, most notably taking into account social sharing (such as the number of Facebook likes and retweets).
In 2012, Google rolled out Penguin,
which fine-tuned Panda – and downgraded sites with little content above the fold.
So now, rather than SEO, SMO (social
media optimisation) has become the order of the day.
Google’s changes reflect what most web-consumers have known, unofficially, for a long time – that the number of people interacting with content is a fair reflection of how useful and relevant that content is.
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AND ALGORITHMS Search engine optimisation reaches the end of its heyday, but what will replace it?
lack hat SEO, off-
page SEO, inbound marketing – over the past five years we’ve seen it all as online marketers attempt to generate the most click-throughs for the