How has SEO changed this year?

SEO is like the butter to blogging as both goes hand in hand. The concept of SEO is so vast no one can claim to know it all. But having a good knowledge of SEO can put you on the top spot of the search engine and the only way is having knowledge of the latest SEO changes. What may seem important last year may not have any ef f ect any more this year, so keeping tabs on the latest SEO trends is very important if you are to peak ahead of your competitors.
Now you may be wondering, "What has changed in SEO this <year>"? That's what this article is trying to explain. SEO is on steady changes as Google themselves agreed to have at least 500 – 600 updates every year and every update is an SEO move. Though most of them are minor updates, but having the slightest idea still matters in this competitive business – Blogging!
In <year>, SEO is still divided into two – On Page SEO and Of f page SEO, while the On Page SEO has to do with everything you do f rom choosing a keyword to publishing an article, the Of f Page SEO handles other activities outside your site that could help improve your site's ranking in search engines.

How SEO Has Changed this year

Author Rank

The year <year> saw a major SEO shif t and this year <year> is going to consolidate on the changes. <year> is going to see "Author Rank" assume a major role in how posts will rank in search engines. Google will assign an Author Rank to every author based on parameters like niche authority and domain expertise. Authors with higher rank will see their posts rank higher in search engines and Google is bringing in the Google+ prof ile into SEO, so you have to claim your Google authorship now and also improve your social media activities especially on Google+. Here is a post I wrote on how you can claim your Google authorship and its benefits.

Google Disavow Tool

Another SEO move in <year> is the Link Disavow tool. In previous years we only believed backlinks are all that matters and now Google has redef ined that to say quality and varieties of the backlinks are all that matters and not the number of backlinks. Bloggers and webmasters started cheating about backlinks until Google said "enough is enough" and slammed penalties on links they considered as spam and irrelevant. The Google Penguin update was born and algorithmic penalties were dished to def aulters and this was a major SEO move in precious years, but Google has tampered justice with mercy by rolling out the disavow tool so you can clean up the links and maybe get your site back to lif e. Take advantage of this tool if you were af f ected.

Social Media

Social media will have more ef f ect this year than it has ever had in previous years. The growth of the Social media networks will have heavy inf luence in SEO in <year> and beyond, so if you are not participating in the social media networks, you better get out there now and join as much as you can, use it to share contents and socialize with your visitors. I am already using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and the almighty Google+. Just as we know that news are spread via the social network so do Google also know that like minds share interesting contents and if you can generate traf f ic f rom such sharing, then your content must have been relevant to your visitors.

Link Building

Any link building practice that involves mass or viral article submissions or any automated link postings to effect high ranking in search engine that ever worked in the past will NEVER work in <year> as Google and other search engines have seriously clamped on this in <year> and will continue to do so in <year> so as to keep the search results relevant and honest. So I will recommend you desist f rom any search engine optimization practice that involves any automated method, be it link building or link submissions it will only drag you down with it. Manual link building is the only acceptable means of building backlinks, let your content be relevant and rich enough to attract you natural backlinks.
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