If you’ve ever done work on your website to improve your search engine optimization (SEO), and you’ve done it in a legit way, the techniques really haven’t changed much over the years.
Google’s Danny Sullivan recently tweeted (via SE Roundtable) that very thing with two comments.
First, he simply said: “Our good advice then remains the same over two decades later. To succeed in Google Search, focus on people-first content.“
Second, he shared a screenshot of Google’s quality guidelines from way back in 2002:
I’ve made the argument for years that Google isn’t changing the rules on us, but they’re simply getting better at detecting and dealing with spam. If you’ve found some creative way to trick Google, they’ll likely find a way to stop it. However, if you simply generate high-quality content that is useful for people, that remains the main thing that Google wants to see.
Google has made a few small shifts over the years, adding emphasis for mobile devices and website security (both of which were irrelevant when they started in 1998), but the core is still the same — make pages for users, not search engines.
The future could be a bit cloudier, as AI is going to disrupt SEO in a few major ways (more AI-generated content, as well as AI-powered search results), but there is no need to get away from the core tenants of what Google is saying. Produce great content for humans, and you’ll do pretty well in search.
