Category: Search Engine Optimization

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The Google Farmer Update Impact

adword-confusionTwo weeks ago and just then tweaked last week by Google, the Farmer algorithm update clobbered a number of website in regards to organic search placement. There was complaining in all the major webmaster forums. In fact the complaints were so loud that at the end of last week, Google announced that it would tweak the update to minimize that had been felt on many legitimate websites.

It is not unusual for Google to tweak an algorithm once it was launched. Several years ago an algorithm update was so serious that it started the naming of updates. It was called Florida. It has become famous in my sphere for screwing up placement on many, many websites. Google has gotten better about including web professionals in their updates. Although we’ve only received advanced notice on one algorithm update in recent history, it is not uncommon for Google to release an algorithm and then tweak it based on the blow-back from pros in the industry.

For our clients, we did not experience significant drops as this change was really created to drop the placement of scraper sites, those with duplicate content across the Web, and sites that are not actively catering to readers. If your website has dropped from this important update, now’s the time to very carefully address your content creation strategy and create a systematic way that you are building thoughtful and informative content for your readers.

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Brace Yourself How You Get Organic Search Placement Has Changed

That’s right how you get organic search placement has changed, not a little bit but a huge amount. I consider the change in how to get organic placement so significant that traditional search engine optimization is a thing of the past.

Remember when if we wanted to book a vacation, or for that matter buy an airline ticket, we had to go to a travel agent? Now, we go online to Orbitz, Expedia, or directly to the airline site and serve ourselves. Travel agents, to stay afloat, have had to specialize their services; becoming trip advisors or travel counselors. The world of SEO (search engine optimization) is changing in many of the same ways, which will be impacting the viability of their ability to remain vital in the world of today.

I am not saying that we will be self serving SEO, but rather that what the search engines consider important has changed so dramatically in this last year alone, that code optimization, black hat or even gray hat link building strategies, and massive link building programs that try to approach site webmasters for reciprocal linking are no longer workable strategies to achieve organic improvement. SEO firms will need to change dramatically to find the niche markets that do work in this “brave new world”.

As an SEO code optimization firm, we have dramatically changed our services to respond to this huge market change. We no longer offer search engine optimization services as we have previously. We’ve even removed those pages from our website. Does that mean that we can’t help clients who need to improve their organic search positions – no, it just means we must go about it different ways.

For our firm this has meant the introduction and reallocation of assets into different and new service areas. When you visit our website you will see services for Google Places, Twitter services, Facebook Business page management, four levels of blog writing, and article writing. We have focused on services that will create a great reader experience and will build authoritative information rich website and blogsite content. After all my firm is just like our blog is named, we are The Web Authority.

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Google Update Their Algorithm to Benefit Information Rich Sites

Google just did a massive update on their search algorithm which impacted what sites get pushed to the topic of organic results this past week. The bottom line is that the change will benefit information rich sites but hurt those without original content.

This is what Google said exactly: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

For our own site and those of our customers, this is very good news. When you build content that is more than just focused on your own business and services you enrich your own readers’ experience and now improve your own chances of placing higher organically on Google.

Of particular note is the comment “with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” This is good news for clients that we have worked with to create in-depth articles and mini white papers which we have then in turn additionally used as link bait articles and have archived back on their website as HTML pages and PDF files.

This is also be good news for blogging clients where blogs are informative and information dense content but only if the blog resides on the same website server as the website files and is found in a directory in the root of the parent website.

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Social Media More Than Fluff

Danny Sullivan, a pillar in my industry and writer for SearchEngineLand, just interviewed Google and Bing engineers about what they use from Facebook and Twitter in regards to signals that may impact organic placement. I found the article extremely interesting and I think you will too. You can read the full piece here.

The huge take away on the article is that both Bing and Google evaluate and use information, popularity, and activity on both Twitter and Facebook. This is particularly good news for clients of ours who were early embracers of social media and have now built up popular accounts and do regular status updates. The pay off of social media has not been fully realized yet, but the impact on future organic search placement is huge.

Both search engines are now evaluating both PageRank and now SocialRank or HumanRank or SocialRank. Neither have determined a name yet, but are clearly watching, gaging, and weighing social media activity of businesses on both Facebook and Twitter. It is now boiling down to Web Authority and Social Authority (how many updates you do, frequency of updates, number of followers or friends) will now appear to impact positively organic search results.

Both search engines revealed that the links on Twitter and Facebook, even though they are nofollow, do mean something to their search algorithms in regards to Web Authority. Twitter links may in the very near future even be considered as some version of acceptable link building program.

If you are not involved with Twitter or Facebook at this time, you had better take a careful look at this insightful analysis that Danny Sullivan has done as I would recommend at this point you get in the game and do so quickly. Early embracers should give themselves a big pat on the back for seeing a trend and the importance of it and acting to take advantage of the new technology which has now given them an edge over their competition.

We do offer social media services at very affordable rates. We invite you to review our own Twitter and Facebook services.