What was SEO all about in 2014?
It’s the customary thing for any ‘year in review’, in almost any industry, to say that it was an extremely busy year. It’s slightly less common for that to actually be true, and as for the likelihood of that being the case every year… well, it’s not very high.
However, it really is the case that every year is hectic in SEO, just because of the staggering number of search engine algorithm updates that we regularly see – more than 80 since 2011, according to Moz.
It all means that a lot most definitely happened in 2014 – so here are just some of the events that stood out.
The ‘demise’ of guest blogging
One of January’s highlights was Matt Cutts’ condemnation of guest blogging as having become just too spammy, as he particularly warned off those using it merely to build links, rather than as a means of creating genuinely high quality and relevant content.
The adoption of HTTPS as a ranking signal
Google’s announcement in August that it would start using HTTPS as a ranking signal was widely interpreted as an indication of the seriousness with which the search giant wished to take Internet privacy – and predictably triggered widespread moves from HTTP.
Panda 4.0 broke cover
May saw the unleashing of a major update to Panda, by the name 4.0, a continuation of the search giant’s drive to sweep low-quality sites down the rankings. It was big news despite Google seemingly no longer keeping us informed of Panda refreshes, given their status as monthly rolling updates.
Local search also got the algorithm love
There was also news of an updated local search algorithm in July, this one being dubbed ‘Pigeon’. It proved something of a game-changer for those webmasters looking to rank higher for geographic-specific searches, with both Google web and Google Maps searches being affected.
A welcome Penguin refresh
Meanwhile, the Google algorithm filter that focuses on web spam, Penguin, got a long-awaited refresh of its own, with unnatural links firmly in its line of sight. There was no shortage of online business owners looking to get back into Google’s good books with this update, having been adversely affected by the previous Penguin.
There were plenty of other big stories to hit the world of SEO in 2014, from the manual search engine penalties that (reportedly) hampered big online names like eBay, to the anxiety over privacy caused by the Heartbleed bug, which was revealed in April.
It all demonstrated even more that SEO has moved faster than ever over the last 12 months.
