Google Confirms Algorithm Change
Last Updated on Friday, 25 February 2011 04:26 Written by vc1026 Friday, 25 February 2011 04:26
As SEOs, we don’t often get confirmation of a change that Google makes, other than the speculation and group discussion on related forums. Google changes its algorithm several times a month, but the changes are usually ‘small.’ Some sites get affected. A few sites go up and a few go down. But, sometimes Google itself will actually acknowledge the change as they did today. Visit the Google blog to read more at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html.
I saw some changes on a few sites today. My initial feeling was that sitewide links may have been devalued. But, after reading the post on Google’s blog, there’s probably a lot more to it than that. It’s probably a combination of various criteria, but it does seem to address ‘low quality’ sites.
What? Your site dropped and it isn’t a low quality site? Why, then?
Ranking changes often cascade through a number of sites and it isn’t always easy to tell the cause. if your site dropped, it might not be due to a problem with your site, but maybe more so due to a problem with the sites that were linking to you or with sites that are linking to the sites that are linking to you and so on and so on. If you’ve experienced a drop in rankings, it may be due to a lack of diversity in your link profile. Make sure to vary the links to your site as much as you can. Don’t focus on any one type of link or source of links.
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Learn MoreHow to Quickly Size Up SEO Competition
Last Updated on Saturday, 2 May 2009 04:55 Written by vc1026 Saturday, 2 May 2009 04:55
Here’s some quick pointers on how to get an idea of the competition you face for a certain search phrase or keyword.
type the keyword or phrase into Google and see how many results there are. Then, type in the keyword phrase with quotes around it and see how many results there are for that exact phrase. This 2nd measure gives you a better idea of how many pages you’ll be competing against.
You can take it even further by using the intitle operator. Type intitle:”keyword phrase here with quotes” and see how many results you’ve got then. This will tell you how many results there are with your specific keyword phrase in the title tag. This gives you a good idea on the number of pages you’ll have to compete against. Keep in mind, though, this technique does not give any clues on how strong those results are.
To get a better idea of the strength of a competitor, take a look at their URL. Does it contain the keyword phrase? If so, then they will be harder to beat. Also, check their backlinks in both Google and Yahoo to see how many links they’ve got.
SEO is a bit of a science and an art. There is no ‘easy’ way to tell by just 1 factor whether or not a site will have the ability to rank well. But, after you do this several times, and have experience getting sites to rank and stay there, it’s easier to take a look at some of these factors as well as some others and get a very good idea of how things will play out. Sometimes G does like to shake things up a bit, but it usually comes back down to fundamentals – Offer unique, value-added content that preferably fresh and attracts links in a natural way.
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