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Undoubtedly, Search Engine Optimization is good for you website. However, for most people working with SEO, it seem like an endless chasm of possibilities, and not anyone is quite sure as to how to make the SEO algorithm work perfectly to their favour. Another important point to keep in mind that while SEO is good not all SEO is equally good for your website – but this in no way makes SEO ineffective if you know how to use it constructively. Now you may not be a tech genius who has figured their way around the SEO algorithms completely, but you can keep ahead in the game knowing all the important SEO algorithm updates that google has doled out.
An Appraisal Of The Three Biggest SEO Algorithm Updates That Google Has Doled Out
Now seems to be the age of the Pandas, the Pigeons, and Penguins in SEO optimization. To start off with, let’s review the largest animal of them all (pun not intended) – the google Panda.
Google Panda
Everyone should be hyper aware of the Google Panda is this update is likely to plummet your ratings and reduce the traffic to your website if you are not careful. Unfortunately for those who played around with keywords and stuffed them into their posts as much as possible, Panda evaluates websites based on the quality of their content with quality content being rewarded with higher ranks and vice versa. The Panda is triggered by unclear content, low quality content (those grammatical errors – we are looking at you), untrustworthy content and copied content. To escape the wrath of the Panda, ensure that the content your website is churning out is great.
Google Penguin
If you have escaped the wrath of the Panda, you might have to combat the Penguin. While it does has a similar criteria for evaluating a page, you are even more likely to make friends with the Penguin if you have links that refer to the content on your website, or have trustworthy sources relying or pointing to the content on your website or your website itself. The Penguin however devours you if there is a lack of anchor text diversity on your website, or if your website sports a lot of low quality links.
Google Pigeon
What’s with the birds and the animals ruining the traffic to my website you might think – and if so, another bird you need to watch out for is the Google Pigeon. Combining location with SEO rankings, you are more likely to get a higher rank if you are closer to your user. Unfortunately, you cannot just teleport yourself to appear closer to a user that is far away from you, but the Pigeon is an advantage in the sense that you have higher rankings to those users who are closer to you! Make sure to utilize this to your advantage by providing quality content, using keywords that refer to your location and make sure to also have a mobile friendly version of your website.
Apart from this, one might also want to ensure that their website is mobile friendly, to escape the wrath of the Google Mobilegeddon that ranks websites on their small-screen interface.
