subject: Search Engine Optimization : Filters, Penalties, And Updates [print this page] It was quite easy and convenient in the beginning. People used to get enough back links to their sites and relied heavily on targeted keywords and key phrases to get search engine spiders attracted to their sites and achieve search engine optimization in the process. With the evolution of SEO techniques the process began to take a complex turn. Neither links nor the keywords are as important today as they once were. Even relevancy of contents that dominated the SEO process until now is gradually taking a back seat with new methodologies and techniques coming up every now and then.
Leading search engines like Google prefer brands to other forms of identification of the sites to be displayed on their search pages. In the process they have created filters and penalties for the aspirant webmasters. Accidentally generating the first batch of brands in their attempt to stop artificial anchor text manipulation by unscrupulous webmasters, the process was later adopted as useful process of finding out genuine sites instead of the fake and manipulative ones.
Growing complexities in search algorithms have now blurred the dividing lines between filters, penalties and bugs. The issues came up first in December 2007 when many sites hitherto ranked as no.1 or 2 were relegated to lower positions overnight. Sometimes later Google sorted out the problem though. Making necessary changes in the algorithms that caused real relevant pages go down in ranking, the emphasis again is turned on regular updating of data and the website as a whole.
Since 2005 however Google has changed its outlook regarding the structure of search results. Unless such links have "rel=nofollow" tag, they are likely to affect your page rank on the search engine result page. Buying links without using the tag could render a webmaster spammer on the web. Since a number of social websites have been using the tag effectively and eroding link value, links that were part of a reliable publisher creating link worthy contents are no more the favorites for search engine optimization.
