Evolution has been a part of human growth and development. Google follows this ideology to keep a check on the pages for maintaining the standard. When people started to understand about SEO and its ways of page ranking, the manipulative page owners started incorporating keyword stuffing and backlinks in their content.

Google, therefore, brought significant changes in SEO to promote white-hat techniques and its usage. The last five years have revolutionised the way a digital marketing world now operates.

If you have an online business, know the changes in SEO to improve your brand name with a properly optimised page.

SEO Changes the World Witnessed in 5 Years

Changes are the only constant! The world of SEO has witnessed significant changes in these five years which have changed the way how a digital marketing company works today. Some of the noticeable changes witnessed each year are mentioned below.

Infographics of SEO Changes

1. Major changes in 2016

In 2016, the updates and changes in SEO were made to develop ways of local SEO and solve the issues of keyword stuffing. The significant changes in this year were :

  • January- Google Panda part of the algorithm
  • March- content, rank brain, and links are the top three ranking factor
  • April- Page speed doesn’t impact SEO 
  • September- Possum update launches and Penguin 4.0 operates in real-time
  • December- Google reviews spam pages with vulgar language

2. Major changes in 2017

In 2017 Google brought significant updates in the SEO world by introducing a new algorithm directed towards quality content.

  • January 10 – Google started rolling penalty for spammy pages
  • March 8 – Fred update changes how algorithm work
  • June 20 – Google job officially launched
  • November 30 – snippet length increased and meta description limit up to 300 character
  • August 15 – Maccabees update with MozCast as a rank tracking tool.

3. Major changes in 2018

The year 2018 saw changes in SEO directed towards making content mobile-friendly and the number of SERPs increased due to video.

  • March 8 – Brackets core update
  • March 26 – mobile-first index rolls out to impact the overall index
  • May 13 – snippet length dropped to 130-150 characters
  • June 14 – Video carousal
  • August 1 – medic core update which affected the health industry

4. Major changes in 2019

There were updates based on MozCast and indexing around it, which was reflected in the health-related business pages.

  • March 12 new update as MozCast reaches 101.2◦F
  • April 5 – a de-indexing bug which dropped pages without proper URL
  • July 12 – Maverick update
  • October 22 – BERT update  for natural interpretation of languages

5. Major changes in 2020

This year the updates were slow as the pandemic situation created a situation of unrest. Some of the changes in SEO seen were-

  • January 13 – major core update with Mozcast showing a high flux and 99◦F temperature.
  • January 22 – Google declared that for organic results, URLs wouldn’t be appearing in featured snippets
  • March 11- COV-19 update which was unconfirmed. WHO’s warning of the pandemic situation was a turning factor.
  • August 10 – Google glitch as SEO, reported significant changes which changed after some time. Google claimed a bug in its indexing.

SEO Changes for a Better Ranking

These changes throughout the years have created the impact of highly optimised content. From removing the black-hat users to promoting ways of Local SEO, Google has come a long way. Now content makers avoid keyword stuffing, adding spammy links and unnecessary ad word. The regular changes in SEO are indeed a way to promote quality pages following webmaster guidelines. The SEO world is constantly changing and making way for AI integrated future.

A smarter and better way of imparting knowledge and information!