Updated: January 21, 2015
Many webmasters do not enjoy having to wade the river of search engine optimization (AKA SEO). This, in large part, is due to the ever-changing nature of the search engine algorithms that run it. It can seem like you’ve just gotten the trick of one algorithm and Google turns around and changes it. That said, SEO is not dead, and by paying attention to what changes Google makes, you can find success and your website’s rank will go up as a reward.
When SEO was developed, the goal was to make an index of and rank website so that information could be easily found. This quickly translated to naming pages relative to their content (previously they’d be given a name like page1). As this idea caught on, different meta tags (i.e. titles, keywords, etc.) were added, which would help search engines further. These all worked, but key players in the SEO-industry suggested that having headline tags and keywords in a website’s content would help more.
The most recent push for SEO is backlink building, which became important as Google began basing a website’s rank on the number of links (both incoming and outgoing) a site has.
While all of these enhancements made for overall better websites, it did allow for scammers and schemers to filter traffic to sites of poorer quality through ads. Google is working hard to erase these kinds of websites from search engines, thus making it easier for searchers to find the information they need. This is a lofty goal however, and may end up penalizing websites who do not have control over who links to them.
Does this mean you should still bother with SEO?
As an easy answer, yes, SEO is still worth the effort because the most basic rules have not really changed. Your website should focus on creating high quality content with quality information that your readers want or need to know. In addition, you should work hard to optimize your website. This will not only help your readership, but it will also assist Google in understanding what your site’s pages are about. The best way to do this is to focus on words that people actually use rather than on the words themselves. Google Analytics can help here.
Since Google has placed a focus on incoming and outgoing links, backlinks are still important to your website; however, remember that you should focus on quality versus quantity. Rather than linking because you should, Google recommends that you link to other pages that provide your readers information they’ll use.