Google changes ranking algorithm: Lesson for webmasters

Google’s algorithm updates once gain proved – You can’t avoid being ethical on Web. The big improvement to Google’s ranking algorithms almost made a revolution in webmaster’s world. As usual, the striking news came up with pool of grievances, requests and post mortem analysis. And, the blame game still continues. There are some serious complains – Hey, Google, this is not fun anymore – YOU’RE KILLING OUR BUSINESSES!” so and so on.

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Yes, the changes have slapped good number of webmasters, spammers and cheap freelancers. The tremor is also felt by website owners, SEO professionals and online marketing vendors to a great extent. After all, years of effort and investment went in vain. And, it sucks.

What is NEXT? Will you repent on it? Or, taking a good lesson from this would help you build the armour? The ball is in your court. It’s time to introspect once again.

Introspect your side first:

Google had been doing this for long and will repeat the same without prior notice. How long will you take the things for granted? Who will you held responsible for your dropped rankings? Today Google has done it; tomorrow it will be Yahoo and Bing’s turn.

For sure, it is not fair to jump on what Google did in favour of public interest. It is the user’s experience that drives Google to remain neutral, unbiased and authentic. And, that is where it earns value from webmasters and browsers.

With algorithm updates, High-quality sites got their penny worth. Websites having original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis are currently ranking high.

So, is it of any use to fight for higher rankings that you actually don’t deserve? Just an honest confession won’t console you much. Pull up your socks and revamp the entire back-ends.

Know the penalty basics:

Though Search engines and website content generators are complementary to each other in business terms, at the end of the day, they are independent bodies. Google is what its users value it. You can’t tame Google’s ethics by doing spam. Providing Useless website information, copying content from low-quality sites, developing links from plagiarised content farm – all these spam and black hat SEOs has got to be penalized hard. And exactly the same happened this time.

The algorithm change has impacted on around 12% of all queries on Google. Many sites lost their traffic up to 50% in respect to keyword competition.

Among those who suffered are:

Content farm websites – business.com, investopedia.com, answers.com etc.

Article directories – ezinearticles.com, hubpages.com, articlesbase.com, findarticles.com, squidoo.com, associatedcontent.com, buzzle.com, suite101.com answerbag.com etc.

However, certain established e-commerce sites did pretty well for example, amazon.com, ebay.com, etsy.com, sears.com etc.

Lesson for webmasters:

If it is not now, it won’t be for ever. The typical SEO professionals and web-content generators have a great role to play safe for their website campaigns. However, these warnings may look quite familiar as you had earlier. But this time, it’s a serious business, so mind it.

Few basics to brush up your current practice:

• Don’t scrap contents from competitor’s site or duplicate their article titles
• Be particular about content generation source, Website information are meant to be provided by experts, not just article rewriters or article spinners.

• Subject knowledge and domain experience are crucial for quality content. So, don’t hire cheap services. You can end up compromising on quality for volume production.

• Don’t just go on stealing pictures and copying Youtube videos to out in your content. You may loose credibility.

• Don’t just copy someone’s feed to fill your pages. There is no point taking someone else’s credit by leaving a link to the original article.

• Do check every article with Copyscape and proof readers. If you write your own publishing software, make sure these produce unique materials.

Well, the Do’s and Don’ts will keep coming. The clear message is – don’t act fake to your readers; or else, you will perish.

On the whole, change to Google’s algorithm is a zero-sum game. Some win, some lose. The reality is -though Google and content generators both are here to make money, conflict in interests will always remain there as long as people will try to cook up the system against nature.