If you’ve been in SEO for a while, you’ve had your fair share of Google algorithm changes. Sometimes nicknamed Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird, the updates are meant to weed out the sites from search results who didn’t play nice.
From keyword stuffing to bad link building: everything is being tackled by Google on a regular basis. Author profile info has come and gone in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). No more author profile images + Google+ circles and such in the search results. Ratings however have remained, as has the basic company info which is still pulled from Google+.
In more recent times, mobile has been given a lot of attention by Google. Specifically, Google rolled out an update on April 21st (dubbed ‘Mobilegeddon’ by the online marketing industry) to award sites that are mobile-friendly, and penalize siters that aren’t. You can test your site at the Google Webmasters Mobile-Friendly Test page here.
For an overview of all recent Google algorithm changes, Hubspot has teamed up with Moz to create a nice infographic. The infographic is split up in months and years, with more specific details below the infographic.
Here’s the Google algorithm changes infographic, running from 2003 to 2015:
The page where the above Google algorithm changes infographic was posted on, can be found here.
If you’re having trouble getting the basics of SEO done right, be sure to keep the following in mind. Unique, quality content that is relevant for the reader will always win in the end. If you do that right and have basic SEO practices in place, you’ll be fine. Within those basic SEO practices, think of good title and url creation, a proper H1 and page formatting, image alt tags and correct meta tags like the meta keywords and descriptions.
Ultimately, you are creating content for people, not for search engines. Because people are the ones visiting your site and delivering business: the search engines just lead them to your site.
