It’s time to revise the year 2013 with all the changes in the SEO. I have considered per my observations and the major updates in the year 2013 which impacted the search marketing in the post below. You can also find out how SEO changed in year 2012. This year is also same as last year which gave a pretty much equal shocks to webmasters.
Though there were some updates in 2012 which has made search marketers crazy and make to change the total approach towards the optimization of the websites. Major updates like Google Penguin and Exact match domain has impacted the most websites with vast amount of fluctuations in the search engine ranking pages. Below are the main events described in the 2013 year, you can also read SEO flash back 2013 for more information.
Panda update (No.24 January 24, No.25 March 14)
As the there were 2 Google Panda updates this year till now. The Panda number 24 has affected 1.2% English queries where as the Panda number 25 has not confirmed as happened but confirmed as coming. Google has improved its algorithm to fight the web spam and avoid the user disengagement. Updates like this will come in near future to get the best results to the users.
Penguin update (2.0 May 22, 2.1 October 4)
There were confirmed updates for the Penguin on May 22 and October 4. Google has announced Penguin 2.0 on May 22 which is 4th Penguin update has affected 2.3% of queries worldwide. Update announced on October 4 for the Penguin 5th and version 2.1 which is also known as spam filtering update. Google has brought its biggest weapon against the spam in the form of Penguin update and it has filter out the websites with over optimization and with unnatural links.
In Depth Articles update (August 6)
There was new addition to the Google SERP where you can get rank and stand out from the others. It’s a Google listing to show up on the search queries which bring out the articles with detail information (usually more than 2000 words). The survey on this says that the articles which have in depth information and more than 2k words can get listed under the “In-depth articles” section in the Google search.
Hummingbirds update (August 20)
One big change in the search algorithm and not announced by Google which has turned out the biggest update of Google and announced on the Google 15 years anniversary. This update is the change in the algorithm which makes search engine more human and provides the more effective answers to the user queries. The search queries which consisting the sentences and the stop words will affects the more.
Google Page Rank Update (February 4, December 6)
Google has updated his page rank on February 4 which was considered as the one and only page rank update from the Google as Matt Cutts said at the SMX that he would be more surprised if it occurs in this year. But, eventually and shocking Matt Cutts, Google has updated the page rank on 6th of December. Well, I am not sure what Matt Cutts and Google has planned but it’s very clear that they can do anything to make people believe what they can do.
Conclusion:
It has become a tough world for webmasters to make sure that their website follows the guidelines provided by Google. There are more than 200 factors which need to be considering by webmasters ranking for a query in Google search. Updates like Panda and Penguin has changed the traditional link building way. The new era of Authorship has started which is more trustworthy and acceptable by the search engines.
If you still doing the same as link building in 5 years back then it’s time to change. Read my article why SEO’s need to become content marketers to stay in the race.
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