Bruce Clay, a top-notch SEO, who has been in the SEO Industry since 1996 – much before Google was founded – was recently interviewed by webpronews to discuss the evolution of search industry over the years.

This is a very interesting video, where Bruce Clay mentions about some key elements a of SEOs that are worth paying attention to, but are missed by many of today’s SEO practitioners.

Bruce Clay SEO

Bruce says

He says links were not important then and PPC was not nearly as competitive as it is now. In 1996, users would scan many pages of search results, but now they hardly go past page 1. Overall, the entire search industry has become more competitive. This is due to several reasons including the additional options with social media and the fact that searchers have become savvier.

This “evolution” of the industry has brought about improvements, but the downside is that search has become more complex and technical. As search develops, these trends are expected to increase.

Clay also advises the following ways to keep up with search engiene industry :

- Attending SEO/SEM Conferences
- SEO Training
- Following Matt Cutts of Google
- Reading the right blogs on SEO/SEM