Google announced this past week upcoming changes to their search algorithm (as opposed to manual review conditions) targeting two very specific issues that need further attention to maintain the quality of search…
- further action on finding and reducing the ranking of content farms – and –
- taking a harder line on spammy content sites where the content is identified as shallow or poor
A few things to keep in mind for all of us doing business on the internet…
- As Matt Cutts himself mentions in this video back in April on past algorithmic changes, Google makes some 400 tweaks to their algorithm each year mainly based on improving the quality of search, so the changes announced above are simply another set of changes added to their already active work in this area
- Again, Google is mainly targeted the fringe Gray/Black Hat SEO techniques of content farming that are primarily designed around SEO but giving the searcher very little content (I personally hate these when I go searching for something and come across a spammy article or 4 paragraph article that offers no value other than to say the same thing every other website says in the same way)
- Always, always, always remember that Google’s entire business depends on search quality, so keep that in mind when you build your online business, brand and marketing plan…keeping this fact in the back of your mind means you will usually make the right decision when generating content, ads or other online marketing activity
- One sentence in Google’s latest update should also serve as interesting for online marketers – “ We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.” What this will mean in the future is that your visitors will have more options available to “rate” your content which will have some bearing on the algorithm for site ranking…something to think about when creating your content.
- Finally, remember that in the end, using SEO tools such as auto-blogging, shared content farms, paid content farms, etc…and spinning, writing or outsourcing questionable quality content **MAY** have given you extra traffic in the past, but does it really end up getting you a customer in the end?Â
In our experience online you are far better putting time into developing high quality content that is based on a solid understanding of your market and prospects where they will both find the information on your site useful and valuable but also may be more likely to participate in discussions and turn you into an authority than to waste time trying to manipulate search to bring questionable traffic to your site.
I would much rather have 100 visits a day where 30-40 people like what they see and 10 buy from me than to have 1000 visitors who stay on my site for under 10-seconds and then never come back again.
What about you?
