If the subject of SEO is of any interest to you then you're probably well aware that this facet of the online world is receiving much more than the usual amount of attention at the moment.
The reason for this spike in debate, research and worry among SEO companies and website owners is due to two simple facts:
- The vast majority of people use Google to search for anything online. The verb 'to google' for something has entered modern language.
- Google is always looking for ways in which to improve the quality of the results it delivers for any given search term.
In other words, Google's boffins carry out detailed research and devise stronger and more sophisticated algorithms to determine whose website should appear at the top of Page 1 for a given search term and whose site should appear in all other positions beneath the top slot. Every now and again they come up with a major upgrade and two of the most recent have been codenamed Panda and Penguin.
So far, so good you might think. If you search for "Harry Potter wands" because you want to buy one for your nephew then you'll probably want to see the name of most respected website selling such items at the top of the list of results. The problem is though that whereas previous Google algorithm changes caused a few ripples in the SEO world, the most recent Penguin update has been like dropping a huge boulder into the pond.
Website owners are up in arms because they've seen a huge drop in traffic with the knock-on effect of a big drop in sales and advertising revenue. All this despite the fact that many of these sites adhere (to one degree or another) to Google's own Webmaster Guidelines (or so the owners claim), and it does appear from all the reports and research being done that the results for all kinds of search times are worse at the moment now than they were pre Penguin.
So what's to be done? I'm no SEO expert so I can't tell you what to do with your site (I wish I were such an expert - have seen what they charge!?), but by doing a little research among the more respected SEO blogs a few hints are beginning to emerge. What follows are a few examples. I make no claims for their accuracy and whether or not you use them is up to you and the risk is entirely your own:
- Don't panic and don't do anything drastic until you've got a good understanding of what's happened.
- Develop an SEO strategy for your site(s). This may involve doing less SEO. You can over optimise pages and sites.
- Audit your site(s) for quality from the point of view of someone seeing it for the first time. Is it engaging? Interesting? Trustworthy?
- Audit your site(s) for the speed of its delivery. Do the pages loads quickly? Do you really need all those plugins and adverts?
- Keep adding fresh and original content.
- If you've outsourced your SEO ask the company you're paying to explain how they've modified their techniques in light the effect of Google's changes.
- Consider focusing your SEO strategy around Bing for a few months.
- Consider the option of moving your entire site to a new domain name.
- Place more emphasis on engaging readers through social media by legitimate means.
- Finally, don't believe everything you read on this subject. I've seen totally contradictory advice from several so-called SEO experts.
I suppose one could say that this is an opportunity for review and for raising the bar in terms of the quality and integrity of the sites we build and how we optimise them for the search engines.