You can secure search presence and rankings in a variety of ways, it may be your website, website internal pages, blog and social pages. Successful SEO is a result of the amount of time you commit and the quality of that time. For example, time analyzing your results and updating your site content.
Where is Google going with its algorithm updates? Clearly their focus is on mobile usage, in 2013 40% of Google traffic is coming from mobile phones. In some countries mobile has passed desktop usage. Google is still struggling gain more market share in social. The question is do Facebook likes and +1 influence your search rankings? The answer is not yet, but it is progressing rapidly as an influence based on volume.
The main factor related to Google Penguin, in my opinion, changes how accurate your Google Analytics are, unless you are analyzing pay per click. Under the pretense of security, Google is limiting some of the analytic details.
BLOG is a clear asset to your SEO |
Link Building is important to your SEO |
The key to total online sales is your ability to connect the dots > SEO + PPC + Mobile + Social. Then, be sure to analyze all possible measures to justify your results and to improve your results.
SEO is still an important and critical part of online marketing no matter what the so called experts tell you. What is happening is that Google search is constantly refined to control black hot practices and other unprofessional and negative methods being applied to SEO.