Old School SEO v/s Next Generation SEO

Have you ever wondered if old and proven methods are better over new and innovative ideas? Well, when it comes to digital marketing upgrades, we all know old becomes obsolete. But let us take a look at these factors that make a difference in the SEO world.

Keywords in SEO:

The foundation of any well-executed SEO strategy has to do with Keyword research. Earlier, the use of raw keywords or shorter keywords was more popular i.e., only on the product or services. For example, “marketing”, “online”, or a maximum it would be “online marketing”. Today the longer keywords are better ranked and appreciated by search engines. For example, “online marketing in Bangalore”, “digital marketing in Bangalore” The difference has been keyword research focuses on keyword targeting. The new keywords research is conducted with the intention to draw clicks to the website.

Keyword variants:

For capitalizing on all the keywords relating to the product or service, websites had separate pages to attract all the search engines and users. This was very popular until the last 4-5 years back where the usability of the website was compromised and bulky websites were acceptable. With the advent of mobile users ruling the search engines, it has become a smarter option to use a lighter website that incorporates as many keywords and keyword variants in its content. Parallelly with the help of Hummingbird and RankBrain upgrades, the search engines started understanding the content which in turn helped these lighter and user-friendly websites to rank better. Digital marketing trends have adopted these strategies.

Anchor texts:

In the olden days, multiple links would mean a great deal of trust-faction, be it for the users or search engines. A wide range of internal and external links was put on websites making them highly valued. Today search engines find it spammy to have too many anchor links on a single page. The suggested best practice is to have fewer links and further links may be added at the footer of the page.

Domain names:

In the earlier days, it was considered good to have richer or longer domain names like “www.onlinedigitalmarketing.com”. It was thought to be easier to optimize if the domain had most of the keywords. To an extent it is true. However, over the years, content optimization and content marketing have taken over making domains to be more meaningful and short. They have also created a “credibility” factor that makes content-driven strategies more useful in the current era.