If you've been involved in SEO (search engine optimization) for a while, you may remember the time when you could create a web page and get it ranked at the top of any search engine with little effort.
All you had to do was load up the page with the keywords you wanted to rank high for, make sure your meta tags were stuffed with those same keywords, submit the page and within a few days or weeks you've captured a top 20 or even top 10 result.
The major search engines were pretty easy to figure out. Some focused on the first 90 characters on a page, others gave more weight to the title tag in your HTML, another paid more attention to the overall content and finally some used a combination of factors to determine a page's rank.
If you were an SEO expert, you knew what each search engine looked for and it was pretty easy to optimize your site for a top 10 rank.
Back then, you didn't get penalized much for keyword stuffing, hidden text, and some of the other tactics that can get you into trouble in today's world.
The bottom line is search engine optimization for the average webmaster was almost like a cakewalk years ago
That was then. This is now.
Times have certainly changed! Those same methods described above will not only hurt your rank, they can even get your banned from the engine permanently.
There are no shortcuts to search engine success anymore. You have to work it. All those lazy webmasters who steal other people's content or use the tricks mentioned above are now discovering that the search engines mean business.
All you had to do was load up the page with the keywords you wanted to rank high for, make sure your meta tags were stuffed with those same keywords, submit the page and within a few days or weeks you've captured a top 20 or even top 10 result.
The major search engines were pretty easy to figure out. Some focused on the first 90 characters on a page, others gave more weight to the title tag in your HTML, another paid more attention to the overall content and finally some used a combination of factors to determine a page's rank.
If you were an SEO expert, you knew what each search engine looked for and it was pretty easy to optimize your site for a top 10 rank.
Back then, you didn't get penalized much for keyword stuffing, hidden text, and some of the other tactics that can get you into trouble in today's world.
The bottom line is search engine optimization for the average webmaster was almost like a cakewalk years ago
That was then. This is now.
Times have certainly changed! Those same methods described above will not only hurt your rank, they can even get your banned from the engine permanently.
There are no shortcuts to search engine success anymore. You have to work it. All those lazy webmasters who steal other people's content or use the tricks mentioned above are now discovering that the search engines mean business.