The search landscape has shifted significantly over the past year. Google released Panda, and then more recently, the Penguin update and these changes have had a major impact on business marketing. With each update Google is trying to reduce spam and bring the most relevant pages to your search terms. Is the algorithm always doing the best job? Of course not. With each update there seems to be a large group of disgruntled webmasters who used to rank well for certain phrases that are longer in contention for the top spots.
These changes are forcing business owners and SEO companies to re-think their marketing campaigns. These SEO teams have had to go back to the drawing board in some instances where well-ranking websites have all but dropped off the radar. In the past, webmasters focused on keyword density and the volume of back-links to their pages. With this update keyword stuffing and back-links were both affected. Some data suggests domains which had a similar keyword as anchor from various sources were adversely affected. This would suggest that using varied anchor text from reliable sources in the way to go.
These updates also focused on unique and quality content. More and more quality content is extremely important for small business marketing. Gone are the days of cheap article spinning and automatic link distribution. Webmasters need to focus on writing meaningful content that gains back-links naturally. If you write engaging content that people in the targeted audience want to read, it will be read again and again and linked along the way.
Social media has also gained immense ground this year. Google released a complete set of reports aimed at providing valuable information on goals and activities. These reports allow users to see a much more detailed breakdown of the effects of their efforts in the social media community. These Google changes would seem to indicate the importance of social media in an overall strategy. What better way to promote meaningful content than social media?
It was a really busy year for both Google and Webmasters. It will probably be a few more months before the ups and downs resulting from these changes starts to stabilize. I sincerely hope those who promote spam were the worst effected by these changes. Hopefully it will take a long time for them to figure out loopholes in the algorithm and return to the first page. Of course Google isn't done with changes of this type. In fact, they've stated there is more to come in the way of promoting search results focused on quality, unique content. We can hope they change things for the better but also do their best to protect honest webmasters focused on search marketing.
These changes are forcing business owners and SEO companies to re-think their marketing campaigns. These SEO teams have had to go back to the drawing board in some instances where well-ranking websites have all but dropped off the radar. In the past, webmasters focused on keyword density and the volume of back-links to their pages. With this update keyword stuffing and back-links were both affected. Some data suggests domains which had a similar keyword as anchor from various sources were adversely affected. This would suggest that using varied anchor text from reliable sources in the way to go.
These updates also focused on unique and quality content. More and more quality content is extremely important for small business marketing. Gone are the days of cheap article spinning and automatic link distribution. Webmasters need to focus on writing meaningful content that gains back-links naturally. If you write engaging content that people in the targeted audience want to read, it will be read again and again and linked along the way.
Social media has also gained immense ground this year. Google released a complete set of reports aimed at providing valuable information on goals and activities. These reports allow users to see a much more detailed breakdown of the effects of their efforts in the social media community. These Google changes would seem to indicate the importance of social media in an overall strategy. What better way to promote meaningful content than social media?
It was a really busy year for both Google and Webmasters. It will probably be a few more months before the ups and downs resulting from these changes starts to stabilize. I sincerely hope those who promote spam were the worst effected by these changes. Hopefully it will take a long time for them to figure out loopholes in the algorithm and return to the first page. Of course Google isn't done with changes of this type. In fact, they've stated there is more to come in the way of promoting search results focused on quality, unique content. We can hope they change things for the better but also do their best to protect honest webmasters focused on search marketing.
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