Search engine rankings can make or break a business, especially when most of that business’ traffic is from the Internet (or in this case Google). Search engine optimization (SEO) can be big business for that point alone. Having an optimized site can mean that a site ranks well for ‘money terms’–keywords that bring customers to a site.
In Google’s quest to keep search results relevant, the Google engineers constantly refine Google’s search algorithm so that spam or low quality results are pushed down the rankings or don’t rank at all. Apparently Google’s search algorithm is tweaked up to twice a day–these tweaks are minor however, and most people would not notice any change. Then there are other times when Google makes a big change to its algorithm. Google’s last big update was in February and was dubbed ‘Farmer’ or ‘Panda’. Google’s Farmer or Panda update was supposed to target low quality scraper sites, websites that copied content from other sites on the Internet or used black hat, or dodgy, techniques to trick their way to rank higher in Google’s search results.
Apparently some sites in the U.K. have been hit hard by the latest update. British newspaper website The Guardian reported that some sites took hits as high as 99% — that’s a 99% drop in traffic. Among the low-quality sites that were hit or penalized were a few legitimate websites. Search Engine Land, the popular SEO blog had an interesting feature on steps to follow if your site was affected by the Google update.
When it comes to Google and getting your site to a favorable position in the search rankings, there is one thing to remember: Content is King. Here’s something from Google’s own SEO Guide which states how important content is to them:
“Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here…Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base.”
At the end of the day, this latest update should not really affect your site, unless you copy and paste content from other websites. The moral of the story here is use unique content on your website. It’s basic SEO. If you copy content from another site you risk being penalized by Google, and that can mean that your website lingers in website purgatory. Google’s goal is to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible, and they will weed out the low-quality results however they see fit.
If your site is hurting in the search rankings, or not appearing where you would like it to appear for the keywords you would like then get in contact with us here at SplitMango. We have helped lots of websites get ranked for their desired keywords and get back on the map when it comes to search.
