A Case Study of changes made in SEO world in 2014

A Case Study of changes made in SEO world in 2014

2014 was probably the revolutionary year for SEO. Webmasters had a ton of changes in this year. Many had to reconsider their backlinks profile, many lost their ranks in SERPS and even many had to restart their online business from the beginning because they were penalize by Google algorithms for being Black Hat. 

After this revolutionary year their is a huge possibility that we are not going to find many blogs and websites we normally had in SERPS. This year Google not only kicked guest posting out of the market but also made very extreme decisions to clean their Search Engine from Black Hats. For Example they penalize many websites just for a rich keyword anchor text. If you are following SEO then you must have heard about Mr. Doc Sheldon. If not read this.

Mr. Doc Sheldon’s whole Blog was penalize by Google manually for just a single guest post which had some ultra rich keyword anchor text. He contacted to Matt Cutts in reply Matt replied to Sheldon by making a tweet. You should read the article above to know more about Sheldon’s case. But after Sheldon’s penalty Webmasters stopped allowing guest posts to their Blogs.

PENGUIN 3.0

The most severe change in this year was the new algorithm update by Google which is called Penguin 3.0. This new algorithm update not only caused many up and downs in webmasters impressions but also made a huge impact on SERPS. Read more about Penguin 3.0 here.

PANDA 4.1

Google announced a significant Panda update, which included an algorithmic component. They estimated the impact at 3-5% of queries affected. Given the “slow rollout,” the exact timing was unclear.

AUTHORSHIP GONE

On June 28th Google announced that their will be no more images of authors in SERPS, Google said there will be no more authorship markup but the next day bylines had disappeared from all SERPs.

HTTPS SITES WILL BE PRIORITY

After having some great thoughts Google decided that they would be giving preference to secure sites

PANDA 4.0

Google confirmed a major Panda update that likely included both an algorithm update and a data refresh. Officially, about 7.5% of English-language queries were affected. While Matt Cutts said it began rolling out on 5/20, our data strongly suggests it started earlier.

THE MYSTERIOUS UPDATE

Many Bloggers cried that they have suffer a spike around 3/24-3/25, Therefore the rumours about the new “softer” Panda update become popular all over the SEO world. Many sites reported ranking changes, but this update was never confirmed by Google.

FINAL REMARKS

After these insane changes in SEO world the new guys, even the professional bloggers are in a worry that how can they make backlinks now when guest posting is gone, Using forums for backlinks won’t work and you can’t buy backlinks schemes because if Google caught you then you will be gone in SERPS.

Tough we still have some opportunities left for making backlinks. After making a research on SEO 2015 I am very much convinced that the next generation of SEO will depend on Social Signals.

P.S: Thanks for reading “A Case Study of changes made in SEO world in 2014”. And don’t forget to read my upcoming article on SEO 2015. I am sure this article will help you to beat others in SEO world in 2015. Subscribe my Blog to get my upcoming article first.