Search Engine Optimization

The SEO industry exists mostly because of Google. Whether we SEO professionals love or love to hate the search behemoth, we all have jobs because of Google. Even whispers and rumors of an algorithm update can have a major impact in the SEO world, because the way we do our jobs is directly influenced by how Google does theirs. So when Matt Cutts, head of Google’s search spam team, announces that Google is working on a tweak to the algorithm that will punish sites that are too optimized for SEO, everyone gets a little jumpy. Here is what Matt Cutts had to say about the pending algorithm update at a SXSW panel a few weeks ago;

… the idea basically is to try to level the playing ground a little bit. So all of those people who have sort of been doing…over-optimization or overly doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level. And so that’s the sort of thing where we try to make the website, the Googlebot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive so that if people don’t do SEO we handle that, and then we also start to look at the people who sort of abuse it whether they throw too many keywords on the page, or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they’re doing to sort go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area.

After news of the pending over optimization algorithm update hit the web the other week, a few of my clients wanted to know how this was going to affect their websites. Were their sites at risk of an over optimization penalty? I read a few more recaps of the panel discussion to get a better understanding of what exactly “over optimization” means to Google, and I told them that as long as their site has been practicing white hat SEO all along (which it definitely has since my company started managing it) then you are in no danger of being flagged for over optimization. Matt Cutts even admitted, “If you’re white hat or doing very little SEO, you’re not going to be affected by this change.”

This update is designed to help smaller, mom-and-pop websites that are producing great content and have user-friendly websites to perform better in the search engines, even if they don’t have the SEO budget to compete with the big brands. Personally, I think that’s great. There are plenty of smaller websites out there that do everything by the book when it comes to SEO, but they are blocked out of the SERPs because bigger brands can just dump money into their SEO campaigns. Giving these quality websites the opportunity to really make an impact in the search engines is long overdue.

Every since Google came out with the first Panda update last year that put the kibosh on content farms, they have moving in this direction; great content is what matters the most for great SEO. I told one of my clients that since their white has been well optimized in accord with Google’s quality guidelines AND they are producing a ton of great content, this update should theoretically help their website do even better in the SERPs. So if you are worried about getting an over optimization penalty from Google, double check your SEO efforts. If everything has been white hat then you have nothing to worry about.

Just last week, Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land reported the latest Google algorithm update which targets ad heavy websites. As Google’s official blog post announcing the page layout algorithm says, the update affects “… sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. Matt Cutts warned that this update was coming back in November at PubCon.

How many ads is too many?

As a user, I appreciate Google’s attempt to take on ad heavy sites. It’s annoying to have to dig through a page of ads to find the one snippet of content I am looking for and it creates a bad user experience. On the other hand, who is Google to tell a website owner how to run their business? I don’t have AdSense ads on my site because that’s not how I earn revenue. However, a blogger might rely heavily on those ads to supplement their income. And with the AdSense guidelines saying “ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold,” why wouldn’t a site owner place ads up top?

Google says their page layout algorithm update is designed to target websites that “load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree,” but doesn’t spell out exactly what’s excessive. In Danny Sullivan’s article, he interviewed Matt Cutts who said that Google isn’t going to provide any official tools to determine if your site was guilty of excessive ads, making it even harder for site owners to know where the line is. It’s easy to tell when a site has gone overboard, but what about the ones that are borderline?

Something very important to mention from Sullivan’s article—one ad heavy page can impact the ranking of your entire site, not just that page. If you think you might be toeing the line of “excessive” with your ads on any page of your website, it would be wise to remove a few to protect yourself from the update as much as possible. Keep in mind that if your website is whacked with a penalty, it could be weeks before that penalty is lifted and your site regains some of its old rankings. Much like the Panda updates, Google has to recrawl your site to see what (if any) errors you have corrected or if you are guilty of new ones.

What are your thoughts on the latest update from Google?

Google has power. They know it. We know it. Likely, that power won’t change anytime soon and all we’re left to do is try to understand their rules and algorithms as best as we possibly can to engage in tactics that will allow our website to rank well in the search engine’s results pages. Google’s recent algorithm change that targets “content farms”, or content sites that are of low-quality, impacts nearly 12% of queries according to Google. This is a pretty significant number and the results have been seen pretty quickly. This is a change that not only affects searches, but also affects people on a more personal level. Mahalo announced that it would lay off 10% of its workforce due to the decline in traffic resulting from the algorithm change. From mashable.com:

Mahalo, the human-powered search engine and directory, has been hit hard by Google’s recent algorithm changes, site founder Jason Calacanis wrote in an e-mail to employees.

“The Google changes have led to a significant dip in our traffic and revenue. It’s hard not to be disappointed since we’ve been spending millions of dollars on producing highly professional content,” explains Calacanis. Due to the dip in traffic, Mahalo will lay off 10% of its staff and temporarily halt its freelance content production.

Google’s update is costing people their jobs. This is serious stuff, and proves that it’s important to never put all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to online marketing.

Search engine optimization is extremely important and should be a major component of any online marketing strategy. Essentially, SEO is the foundation, the bread and butter, but it’s not the end all be all. Instead of relying only on SEO link building as a source of website visitors, it’s essential to also build up everything else online and use all of the other strategies that are available to you, like email newsletters, social media networking, and pay per click advertising.

While relying on only PPC advertising is risky due to the changing landscape of the market and increases in click costs in a competitive space, it’s also risky to rely only on SEO. Google, obviously the current king of search, can make changes whenever they want. For this most recent update the target was bad content. While some of the content might have been bad on the sites that were hit the hardest, there was also some quality content on there that is getting punished too. Businesses that relied too heavily on content marketing and article submission to some of these sites will most likely feel the results and be in trouble. This is why a more diversified approach will keep you “safer” because one change won’t completely turn your search engine ranking upside down. Who knows what Google’s next target will be? When it comes to your extremely important online presence, it’s better to be safe than sorry.