Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “Understanding Google’s Algorithm Updates.”
Google’s war on webspam, low-quality sites that use manipulative SEO strategies to win rankings and traffic, has reached an all-time high with the search giant churning out an average of one to two updates a day. But Google makes updates to its algorithms for many more reasons than fighting webspam. Understanding these algorithm updates and how they impact your place in Google’s search results is important to defining your SEO strategy.
Read the full article for details on each of these algorithm updates in 2012:
- Quality Algorithm Updates: Penguin, Panda, EMD, Top Heavy
- Information Design Algorithm Updates: 7 Results, Knowledge Graph, Knowledge Graph Carousel
- Personalization Algorithm Updates: Search Plus Your World, Venice
The common themes in all of these algorithm updates boil down to surfacing higher quality contents that are more likely to answer individual searchers’ questions. Google is in the business of answering questions, knowing that if it’s more successful than other engines the searchers will continue to prefer Google. The more searchers Google can boast, the more data it can collect to serve those searchers ever more effectively, and the more money it makes selling advertising across all of its free products.
That sounds cynical, but it’s the reality. If your site isn’t optimized for search, according to Google’s definition, Google will just skip over it and offer searchers the sites that are optimized. Understanding the algorithm updates Google spends its time and money creating can help you understand Google’s definition of “optimized” and craft a strategy that merges SEO, customer experience and business needs into a compelling site that wins rankings and attracts customers.
Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce »
Originally posted on Web PieRat.