Top five trends in Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the invisible force driving business on the Internet across the world. It requires an in depth understanding of consumer psychology as well as latest technologies. With Google being the main driving force behind SEO activities, it is imperative that your SEO activities should be responsive to Google’s changing dynamics.

Content Matters
Search engines like Google always try to award high priority to the quality of content on websites.The latest Panda update is another firm step in this direction. Google now give higher ranks to sites with original content. The update has impacted about 12% of the search results in The U.S. Sites with redundant content are already seeing a drop in their rankings.

‘Caffeine’ Rejuvenation
Caffeine is the new index developed by Google to fetch pages form the Internet. Unlike the old system, it searches the web in small batches. This reduces the time taken for search and improves the speed of retrieval.

The “Mayday’ Update
Google introduced the Mayday update which brought up positive changes in indexing and crawling. The update has been very useful for very large sites especially the e-commerce ones. It helps in routing traffic to pages which generally don’t receive much traffic. These pages also don’t have sufficient content on them which further impacts the traffic. However, this update helps in directing
traffic to these pages.

Google Instant
This was one of the endeavor by Google to reduce the time taken in search results. Google throws up a few suggestions while typing to allow users to instantly produce search results. However, this feature is also having a lot of impact on Search Engine Optimizationactivities as well. There has been a decline in five to eight word searches while on word searches have gone up.

Upload Speed
The time taken by a site to upload is also an important factor as far as rankings are concerned. Sites which upload faster feature more prominently in search results. Google prefers sites which do not have unnecessary content. There are tools available which help sites determine their speed. These tools can be employed by companies to make their sites leaner.

The above tools provide a few pointers about increasing the rankings of websites. There are various other ways which can positively impact the speed of a site. Employing these tools will go a long way in making your website responsive to SEO needs.