When we talk about the best SEO companies and how they’ve reacted to the top 10 changes that have occurred in search engines over the last decade, one entity dominates the conversation: Google. Everything that marketers do today is in some way related to pleasing Google, as Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. Brand new businesses and established companies all jockey for position to get their websites listed on the first page of search results for relevant keywords.

1) Google’s competitors have fallen in popularity. Or they have closed up shop entirely. Gone are the days of dozens of competing search engines; most of them died out even longer ago than within the last decade. In the last 10 years Google has solidified its dominance. This might seem like a good thing as the best SEO companies surely must be glad that they only have to satisfy one master. Less competition is a double-edged sword as the 800 lb. elephant that is Google can be a harsh taskmaster. It can take months (or longer) to get some sites ranking well in Google SERPs. Top digital marketing firms will create other sources of traffic for their clients in the meantime.

Please note: This does not mean that we don’t take Bing into consideration. We do. Optimizing for Google does put our clients in a very good place with Bing as well.

2) Today you play the Google game: Various Google experiments have fizzled in recent years, such as authorship and Google Buzz, but the smart marketers play the Google game and get on all the properties to make their clients’ sites as visible as possible in the Google ecosystem. So it’s important to have a business Google + page and a YouTube account. The best SEO companies connect content to these accounts and link them to their clients’ websites.

3) The Best SEO Companies Lead with Content Marketing Best Practices: Thin articles used to be fine for trying to rank in search engine results. Ever see the dreck that is the ‘spun article’? If not, count yourself lucky, but if you have, you know what we’re talking about. These horrible articles were created with one purpose in mind: To trick the search engines into ranking a website. Google doesn’t tolerate this any longer and hurrah, as this levels the playing field and prioritizes marketers who create useful content.

4) Social media & signals to search engines: With the advent of social media, new channels and hence new signals that Google can interpret, became available to the best SEO companies to exploit. But with the thousands of marketers using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and other social networks to market products and services, how do SEO companies today rise above all the noise? They learn about their clients’ audiences and they plan content that will be engaging and shareworthy. This is a very systematic process that is not left to chance. The best SEO companies also re-purpose the keyword research they performed for clients’ organic search and PPC campaigns. They infuse the keywords into social posts. This tactic reinforces the keyword themes to Google.

5) The Best SEO Companies Use the Best Tools: It used to be that you had to hand submit URLs to search engines (you can still do so if you like) and this and other tedious tasks took up a lot of a digital marketing company’s time. When you work with an SEO firm today you want them spending their time strategizing and managing your campaign. That means they need to use the best SEO tools available to cut down the time spent on mundane tasks. The best SEO companies usually have their hands on the best tools before most of their competitors do.

6) Link development has evolved: While there are still those who try and game the system, link development is all about quality today, and the best SEO companies know that they must create diverse link portfolios for their clients. Articles, infographics, images, audio, and videos are just some of the forms of link-worthy content that top digital marketing firms create and distribute. Search engines provide credit for these quality links which act very much like votes for a website. Local link development is also important today to assist with localized SEO.

7) Search engines (Google in particular) answer more queries on the first page of search results; often contained within a short definition or a box on the page that provides a quick answer with a link to a website (often Wikipedia or a trusted medical site, or other trusted site known in a specific industry). Marketers have to struggle against this new innovation because it reduces the number of people who see and click through on websites in the search results. The best SEO companies create multiple forms of content and share it on a variety of networks so they don’t rely too much on Google’s organic search results.

8) Paid search has greatly changed from the old days of paid inclusion. We could write a lengthy article just on this topic; and likely there will be people on either side of the fence on it. Google now offers several paid options to drive traffic to websites. From Google AdWords, AdWords Express, to Google Shopping, etc. there is a paid advertising program to fit most every marketer’s needs. Top digital marketing firms will exploit these offerings to provide the right traffic to their clients.

9) Keyword density is different than it used to be: While Google has openly stated this, the best SEO companies have always subscribed to this fact: It’s not the number of keywords you put into an article that will help it rank in search results; it’s the value of the article and what it offers to readers. So instead of keyword stuffing, know that Google can now figure out the intent of a piece. That means it’s better to write with a solution to a problem in mind. The article should provide valuable information and ideally be from a unique perspective.

10) Mobile-Friendly SEO Means Everything Today. According to Barry Schwartz at SEO Roundtable, (‘Google: Pages With Mobile-Friendly Label Will Benefit From The Mobile-Friendly Algorithm‘), Google says that the mobile-friendly label can help a website’s pages in the mobile search rankings. It also can make it easier for people to know which sites will provide the best experiences on their mobile devices. Also, in May 2016, Google will increase the effect of its mobile-friendly ranking signal (more on that here from VentureBeat). So how does a site get the mobile-friendly label? The best SEO companies offer optimization that can make it happen:

Many websites are already up to speed with mobile-friendly designs. The best SEO companies counsel their clients to discern if their sites will render well on any size phone or tablet. Google prefers responsive design, as with this mode of ensuring mobile-readiness, there is no separate URL or dynamic serving involved. If a site is not yet mobile-friendly, it may be time for a redesign to a responsive template which can handle mobile traffic, according to Moz. This is an important consideration as today more than half of searches come from mobile devices (Mashable, ‘More than half of Google searches now come from mobile‘). Optimization for mobile is key too, with local SEO at the forefront.

If there are still questions about the mobile-friendliness of a website, the best SEO companies go to the source and ask Google, via its Mobile Friendly Test. Page speed is huge for mobile, and Google offers a test for that, too.