I’m sure many of you are aware of search engine optimization, and how getting your website to show at the top of their results is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website. A lot of my customers who have done SEO in the past have a lot of concerns about a pack of animals that Google has unleashed onto the world, wreaking havoc with people’s search result ranking. What are these animals and how do you make sure they don’t swat my website off of the first page? Find out in today’s #WhatIsWednesday.
Google is the king of search engines because its results are the most relevant sites for what their users are searching for. They have talented developers who had written algorithms that are constantly combing the internet and determining what the most relevant sites are. People who specialize in SEO sometimes figure out ways to exploit quirks in the algorithm of propel a site higher in the results. As these exploits become more widely abused, Google puts out updates to their algorithms.  Typically, major Google SEO changes are given cute little animal names.
As adorable as a Google Panda sounds, what I’ve seen this little creature do to sites that were guilty of these “black-hat” SEO techniques is not pretty. I’ve had many people contact me saying that their old SEO company got them to the first page easily, but overnight after a Google SEO change, they tumbled to page 10. And if you’re on page 10, you might as well not be on the search engines at all! If you were depending on search engine traffic for your flow of new leads, then this is a very bad situation, as your new business has completely dried up.
That’s why it’s really important to make sure you aren’t trying to “trick” the search engines because Google will eventually be smart enough to “see” what you’re doing and take you out. Search engine guru Neil Patel outlines these algorithm updates in his “Ultimate google Algorithm Cheat Sheet” here.
So what exactly changed when Google set their Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and Pigeon loose on the internet? What to know more about Google SEO changes?  We will cover each of these specifically in upcoming segments of “What Is Wednesday.” In the meantime, just keep publishing high quality content that your readers will enjoy. At the end of the day, that is all Google (and their animals) want.
