As we head into a new year (it’s 2010 already?) I thought I’d discuss the most important thing about SEO. It used to be keywords. Back in the day, before Google, when webmasters wanted to ensure that pages ranked well enough to receive top rankings in the search engines of the day, you just had to know how to use your keywords correctly. Then Google came along.
Google changed the SEO game from a strictly keyword-based on-page optimization rule to a combination of on-page factors and off-page link building strategies. From 1998 to about 2003 the most important thing to consider for SEO purposes were your inbound links.
Even after 2003, inbound links were still important, but you had to go about your link building efforts in a different way. Quality of links rather than quantity of links became more important.
Starting in 2005, your social graph became even more important. And I believe that social graphs will become even more important in the future. But that’s not the most important SEO factor for 2010…
