Recovery and Survival From Google Updates – SEO for 2015
With all this talk about Pandas, Penguins and Hummingbirds, many non-techies are probably wondering if Google is trying to open up their own zoo. Anyone that runs their own website, however, will know exactly what these names mean. For anyone not in the know, Panda and Penguin are filters that sit on top of the all mighty top secret algorithm that ranks pages on Google. The Hummingbird update was more of an overhaul or replacement for system taking 200+ major ingredients into account and combining them into a new search algorithm.
Different Animals
The Panda filter was developed to weed out weak websites with thin or duplicate content. Penguin’s purpose is to stop website owners from artificially gaining popularity through key word spamming, poor links and other black hat SEO methods.
The Penguin updates have hit many websites hard with only 7% reporting a full recovery. While Google’s aim is noble, creating and promoting high quality websites, the sudden changes have left some business owners reeling as they saw their page rank and thus their web traffic plummet overnight. The newest “Hummingbird” update helps advance Google in mobile searching and conversational searching.
Hummingbird got its name from Google’s idea of creating a faster more precise search engine. Hummingbird is geared towards the way people search using their mobile phones and smart devices, including conversational searches (such as when a person uses voice recognition to ask their phone, “Where can I find a good place to buy socks around here?”). The newest update is better at learning each person’s search preferences and is able to deliver more custom results. As always they are in search of the most useful and organic websites out there.
Are You A Penguin Causality?
It was the Penguin update that hurt website owners most of all. If you are unsure whether or not your website was affected by the Penguin update, the best way to tell is by taking a look at your analytics. By checking your organic Google traffic on and around April 24, 2012 you should be able to easily spot any problems. If your traffic dropped significantly then you probably have some Penguin kinks to work out. Also look at your inbound link profile and the associated anchor text. You will be penalized for a large number of links from unrelated sites, especially those with unbranded or unnatural anchor text.
What Makes Google Happy?
The Penguin updates strive to make the internet a more educational and useful place for consumers. As a website owner your main concern should be writing high quality content that speaks to your customers. Your keywords and links should be natural, organic, and add to the content’s overall meaning. Penguin loves social media engagement and works in your favor if you are linking to and getting backlinks from other authority (high ranking) websites.
If SEO isn’t your strong suit, then focus only on creating high quality content and hire a SEO expert to help you gently work in Penguin friendly optimization tactics to help you achieve the highest ranking possible.
Identifying Potential Page Ranking Problems
The easiest way for a website to get ranked quickly in the pre-penguin days was to stuff as many trending keywords as possible into the web content, even if the keywords were not remotely related to the text. Google quickly caught on to this nonsense and ever since websites have been penalized instead of promoted for these tactics. Make sure the keywords you use are natural, relevant and evenly spread out.
Another huge penalty will come into play if your website contains a lot of spammy links. It is no longer a good idea to put a lot of links to other non-related websites in your web content nor is it advisable to pay for 100s or 1000s of backlinks to be plastered all over the internet.
Conduct a careful link analysis on your own content and also of all the backlinks to your website. If you find suspect links, those from poor quality or unrelated websites, you will need to track down the website owner, contact them and try to get them to remove the links. If this time consuming project is just too much for you, this is a great thing to outsource to a qualified SEO expert.
Anchor text, the hyperlinked words in your text, need to be carefully considered as well. If all of your anchor text is unbranded (random words), comes from the same or similar websites or contain irrelevant content then your website will never receive a high ranking.
Good Inbound Link Ideas and Anchor Text Love:
Have a good diversity of domains linking to your website
Have good anchor text diversity
Consider the “type” website and have a variety: press releases, web 2.0 sites, editorials, blog comments, forums and more
High quality anchor text is Branded (Use “Newsweek” as your anchor text not “highest income jobs”) you can also use universal anchors like “click here” without much risk
Have as many social media triggers as you can (tweets, facebook likes, etc)
How Hummingbird Knowledge Could Set You Apart
Searching via keywords has never come naturally to us and now that we can speak our questions directly to our phones our real search patterns are starting to emerge. Google will continue to refine their algorithm to return results that are rich with content and come from authoritative sources. This means that the more time you spend creating rich and relevant content, the more you will be rewarded. A complete change in the way you’ve thought about page ranking in the past is in order. This may seem like a lot of work for a business owner but knowing can save you time and money
Many SEO providers are still using outdated practices that will actually hurt your ranking.
Your Design World specializes in local Southern California Seo and we can provide you with top quality services for prices much lower than the competitors. Feel free to check out more about our SEO services or get a free quote by filling out the form on our website. Our Local San Diego SEO Staff takes the time to learn about all the latest trends, tools, techniques and uses then synergistically to help grow your business, So you can focus on what you are passionate about.
Recent Comments