SEO Changes 2009, The Role of Good Quality Content & Inbound Links

After so much hype towards the end of last year, 2009 was all set to become a defining period within the SEO field. Sure, we have seen the integration of real-time search, firstly in the form of Twitter, and more recently, via Collecta, - but other than that, not much has changed and we're already half-way through the year.

Google has implemented small changes such as the 'Show Options...' facility, but nothing to shout about really. Microsoft has gone through yet another rebrand (resulting in 'Bing'), and whilst it seems to be working wonders this time (in terms of generating a buzz), little has changed in terms of ranking factors and major SEO developments. Yahoo has arguably seen the fewest alterations; the only thing that springs to mind is their homepage redesign.

When you think about it, there really aren't many fundamental aspects to the search algorithms which the public themselves would want to change. At the end of the day, they are looking to have good quality content and highly authoritative sites delivered to them via the SERPs. How is this delivered? The answer is, quite simply, through good quality, onsite content and quality inbound links which act as votes supporting the validity of the page content.

Both of these key principles have formed the backbone of SEO for many years, and it appears that this does not look as if it is going to change any time soon. Even if real-time search becomes standard, you'd still want authority and validity to be considered within the ranking algorithm, else, were it to be based entirely on the chronological order in which content appears, it would quickly become a spammers-haven. With this said, and if we focus on Twitter for a second, we can see that this is potentially already being considered, with the concept of 're-tweeting'. Each time a post is re-tweeted, the corresponding page is increasing in authority and validity, and may therefore appear higher against relevant terms in the Twitter Real-Time SERPs.

Fundamentally, the basic concepts of SEO have not changed for some time, so you can't go too far wrong by simply ensuring that you are providing good quality, unique content and getting your content referenced around the web by those who see the value your copy adds.

Author - Tom

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