SEO and digital marketing agencies should be used to it now…and webmasters continue to lose sleep over them.
Those who are paying attention, have heard Matt Cutts say that Google releases 500-600 new changes per year. Though most are tiny tweaks, they are enough to keep webmasters constantly studying the new changes and announcements that Google is releasing.
Last Friday, Matt Cutts sent out a tweet that was heard around the (SEO) world. He’s like E.F. Hutton. When he speaks, people listen. Cutts said the change was designed to reduce low-quality exact match domains in search results. He noted the change as “small” and tweeted about it as a “minor” weather change.
All of these changes are designed, at least on paper, to help improve the user’s experience and provide the best quality search service that filters out web sites that are irrelevant or misleading. Google admits that changes are a “commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users.”
There has already been over 20 major updates in 2012 – including the much publicized Penguin and Panda releases which continually aim to penalize over-optimization techniques such as keyword stuffing and unnatural linking with less relevance on lower-quality web sites. There has been many more updates this year than in recent years. In 2009, there were just four major updates and in 2008 only two.
With all of the many changes, SEO has some key cores to be focused on:
1. Quality Content. Writing great content increases the potential for user interaction and the ability for the post to be shared, retweeted, liked and users to be ‘social’ with your brand’s pages.
2. Linking. Always try to link back to your own links, whether main site or past (blog,etc) links. Also, install a site map so that Google bots have easy access to the indexed pages.
3. Site Speed. In order to keep Google happy, it’s important for your website to load quickly. Couple of quick ways: Removing large images and Flash.
4. Title Tags. Making sure your title tag description is keyword effective as possible. Keeping it natural looking and under 70 characters to maximize potential.
With all of the constant algorithm changes, it is so important to make sure the basics are down to help maximize your ranking potential.
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Swish Digital: Digital Marketing Agency, SEO