SEO marketing is no longer what it used to be. Nowadays a lot of factors are at play in influencing SEO trends, and only the smartest SEO services experts are able to keep up with these changes. The direct result of smarting up to these changes is websites getting to enjoy improved rankings, while disregarding the changes has resulted in many webpages suffering lowered rankings or becoming webspams. Webspams are websites that are considered low quality by the search engines because of their use of manipulative strategies to try and win traffic and rankings.
Without wasting much time, let’s get to the root of the latest SEO trends. So you want to know why your SEO strategies are not working in spite of trying out all the tricks that the latest trends are bringing up. If you have not factored in the Google algorithm updates, then you might as well pack up and go home.
Google is at the height of its war on webspam, churning out daily updates of its algorithms at an average of one-to-two. When you understand the impact these updates have on your ranking, this is the only time you will be able to redefine your SEO strategy and actually yield profitable returns. Therefore, take time and understand the Panda and Penguin updates, which are the major contributors to the panic that website owners experienced last year and earlier this year.
The Panda Update, which was first introduced in February 2011, focuses chiefly on content relevance, whereby it downgrades content that has no depth or that has been duplicated. Its heaviest impact was felt then, and the updates experienced now are mere tweaks of relatively light impact. The sites that have been affected by this kind of algorithm are those specialized in similar stock product descriptions. Content farms have also been affected; these are the sites that are dedicated to the production of thousands of content pages, but the information they contain is useless. Beating the negative impact of this update simply calls for producing content that is unique, fresh and relevant.
The Penguin Update was launched earlier in the year, in April, and its consequences are still greatly being felt. This algorithm targets those websites whose link profiles are low quality. In past years, link-building strategies have always focused on easy ways of acquiring links, such as through comments on blogs, article repositories and directories. Anchor texts that have been highly optimized then used to be paired with the links in order to increase their value. Google now considers this strategy of building multiple low-quality links to influence rankings as a manipulative strategy. You must, therefore, create content that is valuable and compelling, even in your link-building endeavours.
As you rethink your SEO marketing strategies, be guided by Google’s algorithmic mantra of high quality and compelling content.
