The rules that determine page rankings and your website’s probability of being found on the internet through search have been changed more than we can count since SEO became a hot topic. For the 2016 period, the Penguin Update to ranking considerations is the master to whom all companies online strategies should bow down to. The update came into effect late 2015 and already has changed the look and feel of half the internet’s websites. We will look at a few changes that revolutionized SEO, and will continue to do this until otherwise dictated by who else, Google.

Every Website Should Be Mobile Friendly

Because the most common device from which searches have been conducting searches is the smartphone, Google declared all websites should be mobile friendly. This not only removed the rebellious sites who did not comply from the first page, but improved the user experience for mobile users.

Getting the Optimal Content Word Count

Quicksprout conducted a study of the top ten hits over more than a thousand keywords and observed that the keywords were part of some lengthy content. On average, the content that was considered top quality was both insightful and relevant to the keywords, with a length distributed on the mean of 2000 words. This is a guiding principle that Google confirmed way back when they declared that content quality will determine ranking. Chances are, if a company decides to create 2000 word articles, they have something to say about the keywords they are crafting around.

Social Media Derived and Shared Content Matters

Companies would be wise to implement a water holding strategy on their social media presence profiles, if they don’t have a social media profile this could affect how they rank on social media. Because social media platforms like twitter and Facebook contain constantly updated content, it already meets the freshness requirement that Google looks at. The authenticity of a company is easier to cross check over their social media engagement statistics and customer feedback, this means companies need to take their social activity more seriously and not neglect it.

Measuring Intention

Google reportedly invited human users to rate websites based on the rules that are now governing rank in search results, while they worked, developers observed their actions and implemented the criteria. This means their algorithms mimic humans as closely as possible, fooling them with dummy content just ends with your assets and domain blacklisted and near impossible to go on the top of search results. So while everyone used to rant about keywords, the quality is more important now, and will be the scale on which results are weighed before listing to a searcher.

While these rules seem a bit stringent for a small company, they are in many ways created to protect them and customers from big corporations who are able to spam the search sphere with content and take a monopoly of the market. Going with these restrictions and being good will work with Google’s new karma equivalent search engine rating software functions. Perhaps the only things to avoid trying are those that lead to being blacklisted. The SEO game has turned into a minefield.