It has been a while since I updated by blog, so I wanted to let you all know I was still alive. It is 2015 and SEO is in a very different place from just two years ago. There are still many deal hunters out there, but most small businesses are finding out that you can’t short cut the search engines like you used to. They have matured and evolved in significant ways over the last few years and marketers need to understand this or they will not be helping their customers.

What are the biggest changes we are seeing to search engines? Well, in 2015 there are certainly social signals in the ranking process. We knew this was coming, but we are learning that it has much more to do with legitimacy and signals than ever before. If you don’t leave a footprint of a real person, you are in real danger.

Negative SEO is a real thing now. There are links and activities that can literally push rankings negative. This was never the case for Google before 2013. But now it is well documented. If you build links too fast, or don’t have associated social signals, you will likely cause harm…

In short, you need to have a real presence on the Internet if you want the search engines to take you seriously.