Away For 2 Years - Summarise Key SEO Changes In This Time?!...

Hey guys,

I've been away from SEO for the past 2 years and so basically haven't kept up with what Google's been doing so I'm a bit clueless. I've also noticed my main wordpress blog has dropped considerably in the rankings when it was previously doing very well.

I've done some reading and spoke to a friend and have basically been told so far:

1. Don't keyword stuff
2. Place adverts below the pagefold
3. Google starting to give seo rank for number of tweets/facebook likes
4. Link exchanges are pretty much dead (but natural linking is fine, within articles)

Is there anything else I need to know? A few years ago all I was doing was writing articles for Ezine, including links in the author bio (which had my anchor text for 3 different pages) and this seemed to work. But I'm guessing its not like that anymore?


Thanks for any help - realise its quite hard to summarise 2 years but I was hoping to get the main, most important points!

 

lol good luck catching up. Things have changed more in the past 6 months than in the previous 5 years. Keep on reading!

1. Keyword density has to be below 3% now.
2. Has been the case for years now.
3. Google recently has been reducing seo rank for the number of tweets/facebook likes. Google + can actually destroy a site.
4. Link exchanges are very much alive and are pretty optimal as long as duplicate content isn't used.

I don't know who you've been talking to, but you're getting some pretty old and misinformed data.

All I can say is keep reading because things have gotten QUITE complex lately.

 

Google seems to think this is Important http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 its the Author information in search results. But you will need a Google+ account for your profile to Display.

 

Thanks for the replies guys!

How do you mean Google + can actually destroy a site - can you elaborate a bit please?