The changing landscape of SEO doesn’t mean much in the broader scheme of things. No matter what happens, you will still be running a site, and you will still do whatever you can to meet the unspoken requirements of the search engines. It’s just getting harder for new sites to achieve a decent ranking.

*Stiffer competition means a greater need for creativity

As more people get on the net, the number of sites grows. The growing number of sites means that competition is stiffer in every field. This is a simple fact, and small site owners need to deal with it.

Some of the things that can give a site an edge over competition can be bought, like good website design, excellent SEO and a marketing campaign. Some things are less easy to purchase, like creativity. One of the great things about the net is the opportunity for innovative people to take advantage where bigger, less manoeuvrable corporations can’t go.

*Old SEO tricks become outlawed

This is an unchanging rule in search engine optimisation. Old tricks travel to the dark side over time. This is partially because some SEO pros abuse optimisation techniques, causing the search engines to react against them, and partly because the search engine algorithms are looking for different things. For example, keywords used to be the most important thing in your SEO campaign because they established relevance. They’re still important, but the search engines are placing a lot more importance on quality and time these days, so your content updates and off-page SEO are becoming more important factors. You can talk to our experts about changes to your optimisation plan at SEO Consult.

Over time, SEO is becoming more of a creative game. It’s getting more like marketing. This means you’re up against big marketing budgets sometimes, but the internet provides plenty of free marketing opportunities for the little guy.

*History becomes more valuable

What Google and the other search engines might be unconsciously creating is a market in reliable and established domains. Even now, if you’re just starting up a site, it’s better to buy an existing domain with a good history than it is trying to get an unknown domain off the ground. Domains are growing more like their real-life real estate counterparts every year as the internet grows, and the real estate market is only going to get more competitive.

Every time Google’s made a change in the last couple of years, SEO-minded owners of small sites have panicked. Yes, Google’s increased reliance on reputation as part of the search engine algorithm does make it harder for a small site to flourish. It does not make it impossible. If you have a small site and don’t have the capital to buy your way to the top, patience is the commodity you must gather. The distance between setting up a site and reaping the rewards is getting bigger and bigger. Even now, it’s unwise to expect returns for a year or so.

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