It wasn’t that long ago when algorithm changes at Google were few and far between. When it did change, there were frantic discussions going on about ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. People were in genuine panic that their website was going to be affected. Panda definitely caused the biggest discussion with some websites being affected massively.
Since the farmer update, Google seems to be very vocal about rolling out changes and ‘updates’ to the algorithm. Google’s latest ‘penalty’ is going to be for over optimised websites. Its not uncommon to come across a website with hidden H tags, blocks of links, stuffed content, 20 H tags on a page etc. The latest out of Google HQ is that they can target people who go mad with reciprocal linking. All this news is something that will make people stand up and look at their own website wondering if they have done something wrong.
I personally don’t think any google algorithm change/update should be feared. The aim is to improve the search results and rank the most relevant page. If you optimise your website correctly from the start then there should never be a real issue with algorithm changes. If you have scrapped your way to the top with quick wins, talking advantage of a flaw in google that just works, then you need to step back, and go back to basics.
Nail the basic rules, then you will never have issues.
- Ensure you are a leader in your industry and not a follower.
- If you go for quick wins, good luck, but just like loopholes they can be closed.
- Never rely on quick wins for the basis of your rankings.
- Establish a USP, give Google a reason to rank you above your competitor
Google recently published a video of an algorithm meeting, it showed all the heads of google talking about the change and it finished with the words ‘yeah lets implement it’. This meeting was nothing new, they have algorithm meetings all the time, they haven’t just started implementing more changes, they have simply been more vocal with the changes they have been making.
Its important to keep pushing with any SEO campaign, its great to find new methods that work well. Ensure anything you want to do is user friendly, that means pages, content, site structure, out bound links. Google will never penalise anything that is useful to a user.
Gary Douglas
JustSearch SEO Project Manager
