Tag: search engine optimization

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Steps on Recovering From Google Updates

Search engine optimization (SEO) has proven its significance to effective branding and business growth through time. Fortunately, Google has been continuously developing tools and techniques to make everything possible for these businesses’ success and the consumers’ convenience. It releases search algorithm updates that consequently helps increase a website’s traffic, and of course, to provide better, relevant results to users.

However, while the constant evolution in Google’s search algorithm has provided an improved user experience to most, it also has negatively affected a few. With this said, it’s important to note what causes your website’s penalty and how you can recover rankings from Google updates.

What Causes Penalties?

If you’ve noticed that your traffic has suddenly decreased, then it’s best to see what caused it. Most likely, there are two causes that can get your website penalized: an algorithmic penalty and manual action from Google’s spam team.

  1. Algorithmic penalty. This is the easiest one to identify, as you only need to see if the date on when your traffic has suddenly dropped and the date on the current algorithm update has occurred, matches. To do this, you can refer to Google’s algorithm change history as posted in Moz.

Definitely, this has become a disadvantage to some especially if they do not keep in touch with Google or other search engine’s algorithm updates, though the truth is, Google’s tight-lipped with regards to its updates to avoid manipulation on rankings. Now, there’s a few resources you could use to avoid getting this kind of penalty and so as to be updated with the constant updates:

  • Follow Matt Cuts on Twitter for current changes on SEO.
  • Subscribe to Google Webmaster’s channel on Youtube to keep updated with the best practices on SEO.
  • Basically, there are some updates that are not officially recognized by Google, however, are still significant to SEO which you can find at MozCast or Algoroo.
  1. Manual action from the spam team. If it wasn’t an algorithmic penalty, then the second most possible cause is a notification on your Google Webmaster Tools account. This may be a warning message due to unnatural links that should be abruptly addressed to recover your website’s ranking on SERP. Otherwise, you can dig deeper to see the cause of the penalty.

Steps to Recover Your Rankings

Way back in March, Google has released a major algorithmic update called Fred. Fred was believed to target websites with low quality content and bad backlinks, thus, if you’re affected with this update then it’s best to do these steps to recover your ranking.

  • Check your Analytics and see if you’ve lost traffic or in particular keywords you’re ranking for between dates March 25th and 20th.
  • If yes, see if you can categorize your content into low quality and old and high quality and updated
  • Correlate your lost keywords with those in low quality and old content based on its previous rankings and traffic volume.
  • Once determined, it’s best to immediately add length and revise those affected content with the most traffic before the Google Fred update to improve its quality.se
  • To check bad backlinks, use a backlink spam checker or tool. Instances that Google may take into account in determining your backlinks value are anchor text similarities and dofollow backlinks that contains no value to users (which mostly comes from blog comments). Should you find any, make sure to remove each of them.

Additionally, make sure that your good backlinks appear in reasonable ratios and are natural so Google will not take these as unnatural backlinks.

Key Takeaway

With all the given points above, it’s recommended to keep in touch with the current search algorithm updates. Also, it’s safe to say that the best way to avoid getting penalized by Google is to create remarkable content and natural backlinks.

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What To Expect in SEO This 2017

With its rising popularity, numerous companies have been using search engine optimization on their sites. Competition is tight and one way to get ahead is to master the latest trends first. The following are changes and developments in SEO that will happen in 2017 that you want to take advantage of.

Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP)

This is Google’s initiative to create a new standard for creating mobile versions of websites. This open-source protocol makes simple changes that allow websites to load 4 times faster with 8 times less data. Google favours pages that use this protocol and give them higher rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and even marks them with a small lighting to indicate that it is an AMP.

Dense Content

The internet has been littered with multiple articles about the same topic with the same information but worded differently. People have grown sick of needing to dig through multiple pages just to get the information they look for. This is especially true for technical topics. However, there has been a rise of lengthy articles that talk about a topic comprehensively. This is becoming more and more attractive for readers because it is like a one-stop shop; all the information they need will be present in one page.

Voice Branding

When you do a query search on Google, there will be box on the very top of the SERP. This is called a feature snippet (also called rich answer or direct answer) and its purpose is to immediately show you the answers you are looking without clicking any link. This is usually taken from any site on the first page on an SERP.

But did you know that these snippets are also available for voice searches? This happens when make a query with voice command. Google understands that you are using voice command for a reason and it will answer back with a voice prompt.  This will say “According to [brand/website name] the answer to your question is…” The reference to the brand names in the voice prompt gives the companies a name-recall branding opportunities. When users recall the name of the brand that gave them useful answers, they will keep visiting. This especially useful when recent studies have shown that more user use google with voice command. Gaining a featured snippet on voice command should definitely be part of your 2017 SEO goals.

Machine Learning

During late 2015, Google RankBrain was revealed; a machine learning algorithm. This is an extension of Google Hummingbird. In layman’s terms, this is how their relationship works:

Hummingbird is what finds out and gives what users want when entering long keywords in Google. RankBrain is what studies the long keywords that are too complicated for even Hummingbird to understand. This was made with the intention for RankBrain to update Hummingbird when it further understands how humans word their keywords when looking for a specific answer. Basically, RankBrain is a mind reader.

Although, it’s been a while since there has been an update. Companies practicing SEO can expect that Google will begin releasing multiple updates beginning this year which will open much more possibilities of ranking.

Personal Branding

Personal branding, for a company, means establishing identity standards which include a personality and an image which dictate how the company is marketed. Psychologically, this will engage clients and customers to interact with a company and its website because of how personal it feels. When this happens there will be more website traffic and securement of guest posting opportunities.

How true is it that people will interact more with a company that has personal branding? You can look at social media. Facebook has already adapted to this reality by revising their algorithms to show more posts from personal accounts over company pages.

SEO is a marketing method that evolves as people and technology evolve. Because of this, it is always important to observe and adapt to the evolution. This year, these are the changes but next year there will be more. Be vigilant and always willing to learn new trends to be successful in SEO no matter how much it evolves.