24 Things about SEO that still matter, by year…

1993 — page speed.. we had dial up modems.. sometimes that meant a 2600 baud connection to AOL, through their software.. mostly.. it was dial up speed running an app, AOL.. on a dial up computer.. (look in your hand at your smart phone.. you have it better..) Page Speed still matters..

1994 — Netscape Navigator — SSL — see the lower left hand corner, the little yellow “broken” key? that is SSL.. if you did medical transactions, i.e. a PATIENT form? the website had to be SSL, nobody knew about privacy laws yet? So we created HIPAA — the Healthcare Information Portability and Accountability Act.. Security for healthcare information across the internet.

SSL — it’s one of the most important factors if you have an eCommerce or privacy interaction in a website environment. Last three websites i did SEO audits on, this was the first thing i said. “Get SSL”.

1995- Yahoo Directory

Later on links became much more important in 1995, registration was important, people paid you to get them listed correctly. Today with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google MyBusiness and Google Maps, it’s the same thing, REGISTRATION in databases where people search. Then Yahoo! today Google, tomorrow?

Later on I helped create the shopping category, do you remember which category above it was placed in?

1996 — Meta Tags. They still work, still matter and if you don't use them right you can screw stuff up.

I wrote what meta tags were and what their functions were... sent it out to some people that ran search engines that could use it...

1997 — The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. — Google is everything.

1998- December 1998, Yahoo! was in negotiations to purchase Excite for $5.5 billion to $6 billion. — Excite, LookSmart, Goto, Ask, Altavista have no idea what is coming, Google is founded in 1998. As an SEO we used to manage multiple submissions to multiple search engines, most of the searches had not been funneled to MSN.com and Google.com in 1998.. next year tho? — remember… websites disappear…

1999 — Did my own link building, actually was doing link building for a lot of companies on the web, was getting 20 submissions a day, 100k uniques a month.. not bad for a 3 year old site built using notepad? Was launching a lot of Flash websites for brands, because people didn’t know how to do SEO on them, yet. — Online PR still works.

https://www.coolwebsites.org/septcool.html Cool Websites circa 99 (above)— still Paisley’s cool websites.

2000 — Baidu, Inc., incorporated on 18 January 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered at the Baidu Campus in Beijing’s Haidian District. It is one of the largest internet companies, and one of the premier AI leaders in the world. Global SEO is more important now more than ever.

2001- Privacy… when 9/11 happened privacy consequences happened, Google realized that at some point search would need to be encrypted, fast forward years later… (keyword not available) — Privacy is everything.. Google GDPR… watch..

2002 — Overture.. Yahoo! starts testing paid ads… if you are on Facebook paid is everything…

2003 — Google responds.. In 2003 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences. Based on this, Google places ads on relevant sites within the content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers bid on a cost-per-impression (CPI) or cost-per-click (CPC) basis for site targeting. — AdWords still work

2004 — Microsoft starts using it’s own crawlers to index content. This is important. Bing isnt Google, people still use Bing, you should too.

2005 — nofollow.. never used it.. spoke about this evil conspiracy with Ruud Hein years later, all 3 search engines, collectively introduce the same thing? hmm.. why? to help all our search results? no.. to catch spammers.. report spam that shows up in client searches.. i do.

2006 — Social Interaction with Search Results.. Digg named one of the top websites, for bookmark sharing.. social link sharing shows more importance to SEO. Where is Social Link Sharing today? Twitter..

2007- Wikipedia becomes more prominent in Google searches.. every SEO’s nightmare, because you can’t pay to fix it.. (supposedly) — wikipedia is still an seo’s enemy sometimes today.

2008 — Cuil — remember Cuil? — THIS IS YOUR FACEBOOK LESSON…

2009 — Google Labs — fart noises in search with Sergey.. Google labs supposedly closed down, but for some of us, it never ended.. =) — Beta google rules.. always join these programs with Google.

2010- Google Suggest.. the beginning of personalized search… this is day we do searches for ourselves and for clients we do them in incognito mode… always show clients results form incognito mode.

2011 — Schema.org is launched… today.. schema is still in every seo audit.. one of the largest corporations in the world was pitched a schema idea from me 2 years ago.. pretty sure they are still working on it.. Schema is everything for SEO.. srsly.

2012 — Google launches personalized search.. ranking reports will never be the same.. wait.. they will use incognito with a blank zipcode for localization. Then we can get accurate rankings… lol..

2013- The 4 C’s Keynote at Search Exchange.. Classification, Clarity, Content, Curate is another version, the Online Reputation Management version is for brands and therefore addresses customers.. the most important thing in SEO… forget about everything, what do customers ask for on the phone?

www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/NDGJxVBXe9yGtL

2014- Authority.. Knowledge Panel.. Matt Cutts’ wisdom — Matt used to speak between the lines for all SEOs… there still is no replacement for Matt Cutts. (Except the new version, @JohnMu

2015 — my predictions? were they correct?

2015 - SEO and Social Media Prophecy and 2014 Digital Advertising Notables

2016 — when i tried to write this same article a year ago..

A Happy 23 years Doing SEO.

2017 — Mobile First — Voice Search — this year i have spent more time figuring out the multi-channel attribution models across different devices and circumstances in the path to purchase and where the most important touch points are across devices… a laptop is a device.. it’s counted AS a DESKTOP??
Think about it…..

BONUS:

2018 — the year we figured out emojis… Emojis are the key to search… where are the meanings listed? (next year’s tip)