Google Updates
Mention of a Google update is enough to sends shivers down the spine of website owners and SEO’s.
Googles main goal is to provide you with the best possible results for what you are searching for. As time goes on changes need to be made to the search algorithm so that they can continue to give you the best results.
Over the last nearly 20 years, Google has changed the way it ranks and rates websites. Over this time people have abused the system and tried to rank pages that in some cases should never have been at the top of search results. To combat this Google has to update the search algorithms.
Google says that they make at least 2 updates to the search algorithm daily. Most of these changes go by unnoticed but occasionally Google makes some huge changes to the algorithm and it causes rankings to change significantly.
Penguin, Panda and Fred
In the last couple of years there have been some updates of note;
Google Penguin has been implemented to stop people abusing backlinks. Once upon a time Google used to rank websites by how many links they had pointing to them. When people worked this out they started to abuse the system and started buying backlinks to their websites.
It is still possible now to buy backlinks. You can go Fiverr right now and buy 10,000 backlinks for $5usd. Why you think this is still a good idea boggles my mind but people still do it.
Backlinks are still a very important part of your website ranking. Links need to be built on quality content and come from other authoritative domains.
Google Panda update was all about the UX (User Experience). Websites that were full of ads and had annoying pop ups were the main targets of the update and their rankings went down fast. It also focused on sites that were acting as “content farms”.
Content-farms are sites that produce a lot of content on subjects. There is a lot of content but it has no real value to a searcher.
And then there was Fred
One of the more recent updates that a caused a bit of a stir in the SEO community was centred again about site content. At first the update wasn’t even acknowledged by Google but was later confirmed – sort of. Google gave it no name so the SEO community called it “Fred”
Fred was focused on quality of websites content. Websites that had no value content or thin content were seeing their rankings drop substantially.
Should You Worry About Google Updates?
If you aren’t doing anything that Google would consider black hat or underhanded trying to rank your website you have nothing to worry about.
You should focus on trying to build your brand online and adding quality content.
Has your website been effected by a Google update? Contact DNA if you need help on your search rankings.
Written by Dave Stansfield - 15 August 2017.