There is a tendency to view SEO services exclusively through the lens of keywords and their impact on search. No doubt keywords are still the main driver. They are still the primary tool through which search engines match websites with user searches. But over the years, user experience has become almost as important.
User experience is a pretty broad topic for SEO purposes. In other words, it is not one thing. User experience incorporates a long list of things including page speed, page layout, menus, etc. Just as Google became very adept at understanding and utilizing keywords some 20 years ago, they have become increasingly more adept at understanding user experience over the last 5-10 years.
Modern SEO services need to account for increasingly competent search algorithms capable of recognizing website subtleties and nuances. Today’s search engines are far more accurate – in terms of user intent – because they are sophisticated enough to analyze things that the algorithms of two decades ago did not even look at.
It All Began With Hummingbird
The drive to where we are now, in terms of search engine capabilities, began in 2013 with Google’s historic Hummingbird update. Prior to Hummingbird, there had been no major updates to Google algorithms since 2001. Hummingbird was made necessary due to the black hat practice of keyword stuffing.
According to Webtek Digital Marketing, a Salt Lake City, UT agency specializing in marketing and SEO services, keyword stuffing was developed throughout the early 2000s as a way to manipulate unsophisticated search engines. Google decided they needed to take a stand against black hat SEO in order to clean up the internet.
They did so, not because of some noble desire to save the worldwide web, but to improve their own business model. Google executives knew that making money meant getting as many people as possible to use their search engine. And to do that, they had to get better at serving up quality results. Cleaning up the internet helps them in that endeavor.
Panda 4.2 Was the Next Big Update
Hummingbird did exactly what it was intended to do. It pretty much ended the practice of keyword stuffing as we knew it back then. Keyword stuffing still happens today, but not nearly to the same extent. Google followed up with version 4.2 of its Panda update, an update first released in 2011.
The original Panda was designed to eliminate thin and duplicate content from search results. Thin content has a negative impact on user experience, and Google wanted to be rid of it. Beginning in 2015, the company began a slow rollout of Panda 4.2. The new Panda had the benefit of Hummingbird’s success to assist its efforts to get rid of thin and duplicate content.
Today It’s About Mobility and Voice
Google has released other updates since Panda 4.2. Over the years, they have all led us to where we are today: mobile and voice search. In its drive to understand the user experience so as to improve search results, Google has shaped how developers create websites and SEO services promote them.
A positive user experience dictates that pages load quickly. It insists that pages are responsive enough to work equally well on mobile devices and desktops. And of course, voice search is the big focus in the 2020s.
It is normal to think that SEO is all about keywords. Keywords are still extremely important, but the most successful SEO services are built on the principle of improving the user experience. That experience matters to Google. It should matter to SEO providers too.