Not long back I wrote a post about the Google Penguin 2.0 update and how this is linked to Google+; seeing how this update just came into effect I spent some time doing a bit of additional research — especially important to me since I noted that my own site (which has a well established and consistent site ranking) was affected some by this update. Whether you are a designer or a site owner, it is important to know what you can do to keep your site ranked highly. The reality is that few know much yet about exactly what will work best, so some of what I note here is speculative, … but that being said, here are my thoughts, and the thoughts of some experts in the industry.
The Google Penguin update was launched a little over a week ago and some changes have been noted by the search engine marketing experts. As I touched upon in my previous “penguin” post, being considered an “Authority” matters more now than it did in the past. Those sites that get linked to and otherwise considered an authority in their specific field will see a ranking boost. This underscores the need to ensure that your site is more than just service based. I have long noted the importance of providing good resource content to your visitors, so ensure that you do have an active blog, and that you are utilizing the popular social media options to get your content read and shared.
Become an Authority
In consideration of being viewed as an “authority”, the search engine marketing pros note that one of the biggest things that Google is interested in is having a lot of outbound links pointing at just one website, as opposed to having lots of links to many different websites. If you are a blogger, or otherwise write content for a website, you will achieve the best “authority” points if the site you write for links to you primarily, and most importantly, doesn’t link to low quality sites. In this regard it is important for you, on your own blog, to delete posts that publish non-relevant and poorly written content, a tactic often used my marketing spammers to improve their inbound links rating from spamming “your” quality site. I’ve written about how to blog in the past, and in short one should never “spam” a blog, forum, etc. Always be sure to write an intelligent “on-topic” response, and as you become viewed as an authority only then should you be posting your website URL.
One thing that is clear is that Google has attached a ranking penalty for content spam. To be clear it doesn’t matter if the spam is content you’ve added, or user generated, so as noted above, be sure you remove, and otherwise manage your pages to ensure that it is spam free. If you are unsure if a blog comment is spam I always check the URL provided and the title “description” of it. If the URL takes you to a spamming looking site, and/or the title for the web link doesn’t match the site then “yep” spam. If you have a blog my suggestion is to use Askimet for spam filtering.
Don’t Overuse Keywords
Many SEO experts will find creative ways to ensure that those important keywords are in evidence on your pages. Unfortunately this has been over done by many and is now being penalized as well. If you refer to a few years back there was the black-hat technique of hiding content within a div layer and then absolutely positioning off the page so that it couldn’t be seen. Before that people would make the font size 1px, and/or change the color of the font to match the page so it would disappear. Well, over time Google and the other search engines became aware of such practices and started penalizing for them. With the recent update Google is now providing no value, and potentially penalizing sites that are using their navigation, header and/or footer areas to include lots of keywords as a way to rank higher for those terms, or sites that include an unnecessary amount of keywords for the ALT and Title tag definitions.
Keep ADS to a Minimum
I’ve written some in the past about how Google indexes the top-third “fold” of a page more frequently, and provides the text there with greater SEO value. For this reason it is never a good idea to place lots of ADS at the top, whether this be through AdSense or another Ad Manager. With the recent update, Google has started penalizing sites that put too many advertisements above the fold. What “too many” is has not been disclosed, but I would suggest no more than one add, and to ensure that it is as ADA friendly as possible.
Ensure Crawl-ability
Every web owner needs to ensure that there pages are easily found. In this regard a good navigation system is a must, and broken links need to be removed. If you utilize Google’s Webmaster Tools you should be searching for crawl errors since these prevent a search engine spider’s ability to index your website. Crawl errors will now have an impact on your overall ranking since “errors” will diminish one’s value as an authority. Once a crawl error is found be sure to fix/remove the broken link, and then resubmit an XML sitemap.
My Experience
What I noted with the Penguin update was a ratings drop by a few spots for a few relevant searches. The solution is to evaluate those sites that ranked above yours and note what they are doing differently than you in the key areas. The key areas to look at are page titles, text content above the fold, use of animation and graphics, description metatags, the keywords used in your ALT/TITLE tags for images and links, the keyword density within the primary pages and how these relate to keywords elsewhere, and navigation names. As for myself, I did what I noted above, and then utilized the Google Keywords Tool to define the most popular keywords for my industry per my location. It is important to remember that these can change over time, and yep, those for my industry did change a bit. I then edited some of the content I noted above, and yes, my ranking immediately improved. I am not completely done on my site, but I wanted to note that any site can improve in ranking if the right choices are made.
It is important to remember that sites that have been online longer will be provided more credibility than a new site proving similar content, with similar SEO strength, etc. To achieve success in the search engines just be sure to provide useful information to people, and do your best to get it read and shared.
For additional information contact us at https://www.ecurtisdesigns.com
Thank you for the reminder of how important it is to keep up with Google changes and how it effects the SEO of your website.