Protecting Your Site Against Future Developments
You don’t have to be on the net for long to see how swiftly things change. Two years ago, hardly anyone had heard of Twitter. Now, not knowing about it makes you a kind of internet social outcast and participating on it makes you one of the cool kids.
The search engines are changing, too. As the search engines change, the search engine optimisation of your site needs to change as well. The continued evolution of internet search techniques highlights the importance of ongoing SEO maintenance. It also highlights the importance of being a little bit psychic when planning out your SEO campaign.
In order to see the future in search engine optimisation, you need to understand the past and the present. These two things can help you predict the changes down the track.
The old factor: relevancy to topic
For the search engines, a page’s relevance to the keywords typed in by the user have always been the most important factor. Other factors, such as page quality and recent updates, have also factored in strongly, but topic relevancy has had the most weight. This has led to a reliance on keywords in search engine optimisation circles, with only a few alterations around the SEO periphery.
The importance of relevant subject information has been gradually decreasing in comparison to other factors, and soon the task of featuring your keywords in enough places is going to pale in comparison to the hefty off-page work the average site needs to do.
The new factor: time
Time is becoming an increasingly important factor for the search engines. With an increase of current information, internet users are getting more interested in the now. As little as five years ago, internet users wouldn’t have expected to hear from their friends more than once or twice a day, wouldn’t have felt the need to check their emails too frequently and would only have expected news updates maybe twice per day. Now, users aren’t just expecting new information hourly – they expect updates by the minute.
Users who are accustomed to news being updated every fifteen minutes are going to have little patience with a search engine that delivers years-old results. Google and the other search engines are aware of this, and are desperately trying to alter their algorithms or, failing that, develop new products to answer the call. The average website will need to adapt to this call as well.
Anyone can be psychic on the net
In the real world, psychic ability is a matter of mystical talent or subconscious observation, depending on who you talk to. On the net, being psychic is simply a matter of research and intelligent reflection.
The trends of the internet are predictable, if you know how and where to look. For a close observer, few trends come as a surprise. This is one of the reasons having a professional consultant on board can be a great help for your SEO.
