Google SEO Updates 2012

Google Panda

Farmer Penalties

Original Content

Content Freshness

EMD & PMD

Farmer PenaltiesEver since the beginning of website development there have been people who steal content from other websites. These website scraping domains came to be known as content farms. As Panda progressed in 2012 there were rolling updates to the algorithm as Google became better at recognizing these sites.

Google Panda

Original ContentOne of the ways Google began to recognize quality websites was by determining the level of original content produced. The idea is that your website, no matter which competitive group it lives in, should have enough interesting and original content to support every page. In other words, you can no longer expect a page to rank for a certain keyword if the content on the page does not back it up. Matt Cutts has been known for stressing the importance of having adequate content support for any page creation - not the other way around.

Google Panda

Google Panda

Content FreshnessAnother key factor for rankings that has come from Panda is the idea that the natural progression of a website should have regular content additions. Google believes that if a website is going to stay relevant it will need to be interesting for users and follow current trends.

Blog creation, regular updates on sale information, weather updates, upcoming events, etc. – These are just a few of the ways a business can maintain website freshness in its competitive space.

EMD & PMDExact Match Domains (EMD) & Partial Match Domains (PMD) are receiving more scrutiny from Google Panda these days. After an update in September 2012 there were a lot of EMD that lost top page rankings if they were not supported by quality content.

Having keywords in the domain name of your website used to be a ranking factor toward the positive in the world of search. Talk of reducing the value of an exact match domain has been around for a couple years, but it wasn’t until the Penguin update came along to more closely measure the quality of a site that it was made possible.

Google Panda

www.NO-MORE-KEYWORD-STUFFING.com

No More Black Hat!!

Google Penguin

Quality Links

User Engagement

Page Layout

Reduce Over Optimization

Page LayoutWhen Penguin was released in March of 2012 it was originally called the Page Layout update by Google. The algorithm was updated to evaluate the quality of each individual pages based on its layout.

This part of penguin refers to the structure of the page itself. In other words, how does the page read and is it user friendly. The idea of placing engaging content “above the fold” became an important part of SEO practices.

Google Penguin

Engaging Content

Page Title With Relevant Keyword

Interesting Visual

Engaging ContentInteresting Visual

Google Penguin

Reduce Over-optimizationTaking the page layout guidelines even further Google began to penalize over-optimization. In a rare pre-release notification, Matt Cutts told the SEO community that this update was intended to give equal opportunity to websites creating high quality content.

The Penguin algorithm update changed the nature of SEO so that nobody would have the upper hand by using tricks to game the system. With this evolution happening in the SEO world the industry became less focused on ways to gain rankings and more focused on finding innovative business marketing strategies.

Google Penguin

Quality LinksThe number of links that point to a website directly effects its domain authority. It used to be that you could purchase links whether that was through link farm websites, directory listings or article placements.

Google then took it one step further by penalizing websites who continue to have “bad links” pointing to their domain can now be penalized by Google. They even began a new service `in Google Webmaster Tools to alert website owners that they had “questionable links” for their domains and should work to get them removed.

Google Penguin

User EngagementFor white hat SEOs this piece of our job has always been the most important. How do users interact with the website and are they finding what their search queries brought them here for? With the Penguin update fewer and fewer poorly constructed websites are making the cut.

Google has been reporting on user engagement in Analytics for years and now they are giving more value to how interesting a website is. Not only is a website expected to have original and robust content to support search queries, but how a searcher behaves once they arrive to your site is also very important.

Google+

Social Interaction

Business Pages

User Reviews

Google+ Local

Google+

Google+ LocalEveryone chuckled a little when Google developed the “+” universe as competition to the ever-popular Facebook. Then early this year the switch was made from Google Places to Google+ Local. With the popularity of Google Maps and the slow start of Google+ they decided to combine the two.

Business PagesBy creating a business page on Google+ you are giving potential customers more information about your product that may make it more engaging. The more information you can showcase about your business the more likely you are to get new customers who find you through relevant search queries.

Google+

User ReviewsGoogle has become more dependent on reviews in determining the value of a business in the local market. Taking that one step further, Google also places value on the response businesses give to their customer reviews and the ways in which they encourage people to leave their thoughts.

Social Interaction Google+ for business has become a way for many websites to incorporate social interaction through their listings. Users who are signed in to Google can now leave reviews at the push of a button and give your business a +1 at the same time.