What is the Status of SEO in 2017
As is commonplace whenever Google releases one if its major updates, the SEO community quickly goes into an uproar and claims of SEO being dead begin to circulate. With Google’s most recent (and highly controversial) Fred update just a few months ago, marketers are once again questioning whether SEO is still a good way to drive traffic. The good news is that it is, but the bad news is that it is definitely more difficult than before.
What are the latest updates and trends?
Don’t worry, search engine optimization is still a multi billion dollar industry and growing rapidly every day, but things have certainly changed. To find out how the landscape is shifting, we asked a search engine optimization expert to weigh in on the most recent changes to the algorithm and peoples perception of SEO from a client standpoint.
SEO is certainly changing every day, especially with the live Penguin and the most recent Fred update, but I don’t think that things are really that different. For us, the methods we use have remained consistent over the last few years (with tweaking to a few things), while other agencies have had to update their entire process to keep up with the algorithm changes. I think that the changes have actually been a good thing because they weed out the people who were able to get by with shady tactics before, and it’s really been improving the search results as a whole.
– Justin M. Account Manage at a Buffalo SEO Company
Of course, improving the search results is something Google is always striving for, as the end-user experience is what is keeping them miles ahead of competitors like Yahoo and Bing, but some have a different view of the updates and the tactics they target. We spoke with another SEO professional whose clients have been majorly impacted by the algorithm changes.
I honestly don’t think these new updates are a good thing at all. From the standpoint of Google, they want to make their results as high quality as possible, but the way they measure “quality” really puts small local businesses at a disadvantage. The reason that sites like Yelp, Houzz, BBB and the other common national authorities you always see at the top of the results are there is because they have more inherent “trust” in the eyes of Google. This puts small local businesses at a HUGE disadvantage because how can they even come close to getting that much trust without resorting to tactics that Google frowns upon?
– Ron B. Lead SEO at a National Marketing Company
This brings up a good point, but it is a catch-22 that has two equally difficult sides. On one hand, having national authority brands at the top of the search results means that users are getting a verified, trusted, and nationally recognized result. On the other hand, it means that legitimate businesses have a hard time competing and gaining the exposure they need to thrive from organic traffic. Then again, if Google allows “untrusted” local businesses to the top of the results, it makes it easy for spammers to rank sites (like what happened with locksmiths), and decreases the quality of the search results. This is truly a problem that Google have been combating for years and, while the algorithm has been improving, it is something they will have to continuously improve upon for years to come.
Sources:
A digital marketing & SEO company
Some personal experience 🙂