It's not front page news that the SEO landscape has been changing over the past few years. Ever since Google released their various wild animal updates, the SEO industry has been scrambling to keep its head above water. Some internet pundits even claim that SEO will soon be an extinct creature. Whether they will be proven right down the road remains to be observed, but it is crystal clear that it is sink-or-swim time because of this industry. To remain Home page in the highly intelligent search algorithm world, SEO must evolve right into a more sophisticated creature.

Essentially, the aim of the game remains the same. If four years back the aim of your SEO strategy was to increase organic traffic to your site, that still holds true today, but the route taken to make that happen aim has taken a significant detour. Moscarino Landscape + Design has managed to get amply clear that it prefers quality over quantity. Stuffing your content with keywords and traditional link building methods are so 2008! It's the era now where the customer or user may be the lord and master of the web universe. If your articles does not create a satisfactory user experience, you are out. Gone will be the days when you could get away with poor writing and spammy links.

Google released its first Panda update in February 2011 and the first of its Penguin updates in April 2012. To date there have been 24 updates to their algorithm, the latest being an update on January 22, 2013. With one of these updates, the times when SEO was just a form of manipulation of search engine rankings are well and truly over. The focus now has shifted from mere optimization to increasing website quality and user experience. This does not mean that the SEO industry must now drop all of the strategies they once used, but a definite fine-tuning is in order. For example, while link building was extremely popular earlier, now it really is all about getting people to share your links and while keyword stuffing is really a definite no-no, keyword relevance may be the new mantra. Items that weren't important before have finally increased their significance. Analysis regarding bounce rates, conversion rates, and site response times were only dear to marketers earlier, however now Google also has developed a craving for them and uses them as yardsticks for search engine rankings.


The increased role of user metrics has also brought another facet of the internet into sharp focus- the social media marketing world. There is absolutely no doubt that social media is playing an increasing role is serp's. That is because the activity in the social media marketing world is very hard to fake, which explains why Google trusts it. Getting people to share your content in the form of likes, retweets, +1's, and link shares have become like gold dust and for that you need to create content that is fresh, relevant, informative, and interesting to the user. This is of course good news for content writers who spending some time and effort on producing quality content.

Another area that SEOers must look into is the smartphone user. Mobile search has grown more than 500% over the last year or so. Additionally it is predicted that mobile internet use will replace desktop use as early as 2015. With more and much more people searching the net on their smart phones, it makes imminent sense to create websites optimized for the mobile device too.

With Google updating its algorithms 2-3 times each day, SEO is still vital for your websites ranking. By making the required changes to your SEO strategy, it is possible to still be near the top of the game.