seo
Why Keywords Still Matter in SEO (But They Aren't Everything) In the early days of search engine optimization (SEO), keywords were everything. Many search engines including Google relied heavily on matching keywords and phrases in a user’s search query with real pages on the web. For example, if a person searched for “hot dog restaurant,” Google’s algorithm would disproportionately favor domains and pages with the exact phrase “hot dog restaurant.” This led to the rise and dominance of keyword research, and keyword-centric SEO strategies. Writing content and building links that contained the phrase “hot dog restaurant” could practically guarantee your ranking for the phrase — but that's not the case anymore. Google's algorithm update in 2013, called Hummingbird, introduced semantic search capabilities. Google started looking at the context of content, rather than just scanning for specific keywords, which required SEO and content marketing strategies to shif...