The Biggest Trend in SEO

At conferences and in conference rooms, we hear these things a lot:

“Google changes every day…”

“The Google algorithm is updated 500 times per year…”

“You need to stay on top of your rankings…”

And changes in Google mean changes to rankings, right? But what if the biggest changes in Google have nothing to do with rankings?

Yes, Google is constantly changing. And yes the changes affect your traffic. But no, the biggest SEO trends don’t affect your rankings. They affect your click-through rates. There’s a big difference.

Travel back in time with me…

Five short years ago, the typical SERP (search engine results page) looked much different. I have an archive of old screenshots of SERPs, so this is going to be fun. Just glancing at these make the big SEO trends obvious.

In 2014, if you searched for “lead generation websites” this is what you found.

Feeling nostalgic? There’s the old Google logo. But what else is different about this page?

• The ads are more prominent
• The little icon next to each ad was bright yellow. There was even a line that separated the ads from the organic rankings. And there were all those ads on the right rail.
• The top organic listing is about 450 pixels down
• Assuming the average fold for desktop users is at 700 pixels, three organic listings are visible without scrolling.
• I’m ranking #4
• That puts me 800 pixels down the page. We’ll come back to this.

Now let’s look at that same search today, in 2019.