Three Things You Can Do To Stay Ahead Of Google's Updates

Google's recent updates have rattled many webmasters. Are your rankings safe? Do you have to worry about Google's next updates? There are three things that you can do to stay ahead of future Google updates.

1. Understand that Google wants the same as you

Google wants to offer web searchers the solution to their problems. Your products and services also solve the problems of your customers. Show Google that your website offers the best solution to a problem.

2. Focus on your visitors and Google will follow

Some webmasters try to create the perfect backlink profile for Google. That's not how you should work. A backlink is a good link if it delivers targeted visitors to your website.
There's only one question that you have to ask to find high quality backlinks: "Can I get good website visitors through this link?"
If the answer is yes, you should try to get the link. Do not worry too much about backlink profiles. If you only create links that are useful for real people, Google will like your links.

3. Diversify

Getting visitors through Google is great, but it should not be your only source. Each new channel that drives visitors to your website will make you less dependent from Google:

• Get listed on Bing and other search engines.
• Get links on related websites that deliver visitors to your site.
• Improve the conversion rate of your web pages and optimize the long-term value of each visitor.
• Develop relationships with companies and people who are related to your business.

Google wants to show high quality sites in the search results. If your website offers compelling content that offers the solution to a problem then Google will give your pages high rankings. Don't try to please Google. Try to please your website visitors.

Offer good content, get backlinks that deliver visitors and offer a valuable website. That will place your business in a secure position.

Google releases two new ranking algorithm updates

It seems that Google releases a new ranking algorithm update every week. Last week, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that there is another algorithm update that targets web spam. What does this mean for your rankings and how must you react?

Google doesn't like web spam

“In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content.While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.”

Things that Google considers spam

Google’s announcement shows two examples. The first example is a page that is stuffed with hundreds of keywords in a comma separated list.

Google doesn’t want that type of pages in the search results. The second example is a page that has normal text. However, the text contains keyword optimized links that are totally unrelated to the surrounding text.

Other things that Google considers spam are linking schemes, misleading redirects or purposeful duplicate content.

Google says that the right kind of SEO is fine

Many people confuse search engine optimization with spamming. Spamming and SEO are two totally different things. Google’s latest announcement also contains a statement about “white hat” SEO:

"Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. [...]

 'White hat' search engine optimizer often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines."

How to react to Google's latest ranking algorithm

Google released two algorithm updates: a Panda update on April, 19th and the update explained above on April, 24th. If your web page rankings dropped on April, 19th, then you have to improve the quality of your web pages.

If your page rankings dropped on April, 24th, then you have to remove all spam elements from your web pages. If you think that your website was flagged by mistake, you can inform Google through this form.

Only use white-hat SEO methods if you want to be on the safe side

Use shady SEO methods and Google might penalize your website. If you want to be on the safe side, only use white-hat SEO methods.

Infographic: The Google Panda Update, One Year Later

One year ago, Google launched its “Panda Update” designed to filter low quality or “thin” content from its top search results.

Below, our infographic produced in conjunction with BlueGlass covers how Panda works, what it impacted and the various updates from Panda 1.0 through Panda 3.2 that have happened along the way.

After the infographic, you’ll also find more information about the Panda Update ranging from in-depth analysis of how it works, “winners and losers” and well as recovery tips.

How to check if spammers abuse your website

A new type of spam cloaking is getting more popular: spammers hack into popular websites that have high rankings on Google and then insert keyword rich links and redirects to other websites. What can you do to make sure that your website is not abused by spammers?

What is cloaking?

Cloaking is a spamming technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from the content presented to regular users.
This is done by delivering content based on the user-agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page, the IP address of a user or the referring page:

1. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page.
   
   The search engine spider can be identified based on the IP address and on the user-agent HTTP header.
   
   
2. When a user comes from a particular page (for example a Google search result page), the web server delivers a different version of the page than users get when they enter the URL of the page directly in the browser.

These methods can be combined. A web page can be cloaked based on the IP address, the user-agent, referring web page or any combination of these three factors.

How do spammers abuse your website?

Many websites have security holes. Spammers use them to hack into your server and to change the content of your web pages. They can do the following with your pages:

1. They insert keyword rich links to spammer sites on your web pages. These links are only visible to Google's indexing spider. For Google, it looks as if your website is endorsing the spammer website with a link.
   
   
2. They redirect your website visitors to their own pages. Google gets your regular page. People who visit your web pages after clicking on your website listing on Google's search results will be redirected to the spammer website.

How can you find out if spammers abuse your site?

There are several ways to find out if spammers change your web pages:

1. Search Google for "site:yourdomain.com" (replace yourdomain.com with your own domain). Browse through the search result pages and check the titles and descriptions that Google uses for your web pages.Click on a listing to make sure that visitors are directed to the correct page.
2. Click on the "Cached" link on Google's search result pages for your domain to see the content that Google has indexed on your pages.Look for links, Javascript and other elements that don't belong on your page.

Use the tips above to find out if hackers have changed the content of your web pages. To make sure that hackers cannot abuse your website, use the latest version of your content management system and install the latest security updates.

Everything you need to know about Google's +1 button

Google's +1 button is now available for websites. The new button will influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results. What exactly does this button do and how can you use it with your web pages?

What is Google's +1 button?

The +1 button is Google's answer to Facebook's "Like" button. It is a button that you can add to your website.

When one of your website visitors clicks the +1 button, your website URL appears on the +1 tab on the user's Google profile. Google wants website visitors to click on the +1 button when they find something interesting or recommendable.

What does Google do with the +1 clicks?

For people who are logged in to Google, their search result snippets might be annotated with the number of +1's that the listed page has received.

If someone who is connected to you through your Google account (Gmail chat list, contacts, etc.) clicked the +1 button, then the name of the person might be listed next to the search result snippet.

Google also announced that the +1 button will influence the search rankings of a page. The number of +1 clicks and the person who clicks on your +1 buttons might influence the position of your pages.

As it is very likely that spammers will try to use the +1 button, Google will perform tests before the +1 button has a major influence on the search results.

According to Google, the number of +1 clicks can also influence the position of an AdWords ad for the page with the +1 button.

What is Google's +1 button not?

The Google +1 button is not the same as the Google Buzz button. However, many sites have already replaced their old Google Buzz button with the new +1 button.

It is likely that Google Buzz functionality will also be added to +1. Google also announced analytics for the +1 button to show webmasters info on geography, demographics, content, and search impact.

Although Google's +1 button does not have a major impact on the position of your web pages in Google's search results yet, it does not hurt to add the button to your pages.

How to secure your rankings after Google's latest update

Google's Panda update caused a ranking drop for many websites. Google has a very long official discussion thread about this topic. The discussion reveals things that you can do to make sure that your website gets its rankings back.

The update is not just about content farms

Google's new algorithm targets low quality websites. It seems that Google defines a low quality website like this:

·         The website does not have enough content to be useful (shallow content).

·         The website has poorly written content.

·         The content of the website has been copied from other sites.

·         The content of the website is not useful.

With Google's latest update, it is not enough to have unique content on a website. It also doesn't help if there are many unique words on your web pages. The content has to be useful to your website visitors.

Even high quality pages can be affected

The low quality content on part of a website can impact the rankings of the entire website:

"It's important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site's ranking as a whole.

For this reason, if you believe you've been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain.

Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content."

Things that you can do to make sure that Google does not penalize your site

There are several things that you can do to make sure that Google does not penalize your site:

·         Improve the poor quality pages on your website. Ask yourself: is the page useful to my website visitors? If not, improve the content of the page to make it more useful.

·         It is very likely that the overall user experience is important. Check the usability and the design of your web pages. Your web pages should be easy to navigate and they should have a professional design.

·         Check the ads/content ratio on your web pages. If a web page mainly consists of ads then it is likely that Google considers it low quality.

·         Don't try to cheat Google with shady search engine optimization methods. Focus on optimization methods that are beneficial to webmasters, website visitors and Google.

 Search engine optimization is not about getting high rankings for every possible keyword. It is about getting high rankings for the right keywords and about meeting the expectations of the website visitors.

If you have high rankings for the right keywords, your website will deliver many new customers to your business. If you give Google what they want, your website will get high rankings and more sales.