How to become the website every search engine likes

Google's Panda and Penguin Updates are sure to filter you out of organic search results if you still rely on out dated SEO algorithms.

This is because Google wants its users to trust it as a relevant source of information. No more low quality, repetitive content, that seems to stretch its limited vocabulary, of specially selected keywords, to new levels of "search engine friendliness". Google are the B-52s carpet bombing the farm mills off the organic search engine results page (SERPs). With Panda and Penguin; their specially trained militia and rumors of a secret "sandbox effect" weapon, you could say Google is ready to storm the beaches. If your site is guilty of content farming you should start digging a very deep trench.

Do not despair, for there is a solution. Stay your shovel hand, fellow!

Yes, you just have to play nicely and follow Google's rules.

But first, let's ask a few questions. Since, perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions. Or not Googling it to begin with.

So why Google? As it turns out, the Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day from all over the globe including Antarctica. It can be translated into 88 languages, including Klingon and Latin. Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world. In other words; it's everywhere and users are getting used to that.

Panda and Penguin? In a nutshell. These are algorithmic updates to methods used by bots to crawl the web for relevant search results.

Sandbox effect? Is said to be a temporary effect Google employs to filter certain sites from their index rankings to prevent their full impact. Want to find out more?

So unless you want to make friends with search engines and not the clients or guests you hope to attract to your website, you have to jump aboard Google's band-wagon and get with the algorithm. In other words, if you haven't updated your site recently, you need to review and consider how your site is optimized to appear in the search results. This will not happen with keywords alone, so you can no longer rely on them entirely, and you can no longer turn a blind eye to keyword stuffing either. Keep it simple, keep it clean, and keep it short. Consider relevant long-tailed and short-tailed keywords.


Hey, we got more nutshells:

Keyword Stuffing: The scrupulous action of loading meta tags and content with repetitive keywords. Want to find out more?
Content Farming/Milling: The dubious method of filling sites with repetitive content specifically designed to manipulate organic search results. Want to find out more?

Google now relies on other methods to assess the quality and authenticity of your content; through social network interaction (Google accepts this as a recommendation), back-links ("Google Juice" -the potential inbound traffic a link can produce), long-tailed and short-tailed keywords, and blogging (yes, blogging!).

Google has outline specifically what it considers to be a high-quality site on their Webmaster Central Blog.

If you're not sure if your site is still in Google's favour, Webmaster Tools can provide you with detailed reports of your pages' visibility once you've added and verified your site with Google. You can submit your site for reconsideration if you want Google to give it more attention- but only if your site meets it's quality guidelines.

If you keep in mind these three simple steps, you'll be improving your organic SERPs results considerably:
1) Write for readers, not for search engines.
2) Quality over quantity.
3) Originality over commonality.

These methods are worth looking into, and although Google's SEO algorithms are constantly altering, it will never go back. So don't think this will all blow over. Google's B-52s are always ready for another run.

Feel free to comment and share your thoughts on the subject.

Blogged into existence by:
Nathan Shepherd
Web Designer & Developer @ Creative Web Design 2012
Cape Town
South Africa

Creative Web Design-Design Your Future

Creative Web Design can improve your sites ranking in the organic search with SEO techniques Google approves. We can assess your site to see if it meets Google standards, and if it doesn't we can rectify the issues and submit it for "reconsideration".

For more information on how we can help you contact us:
design@creative-web-design.co.za 
Bringing You Closer To The Web