Google algorithm change, January 2011
Earlier today I wrote a post about changes in my rankings with a few first thoughts on why this may have happened. In that post I said I will do more research and will be back with more actionable items. Also, shortly after posting it a good friend of mine Serge Nekipelov commented on Facebook with a very generic recommendation for improvement. I though I take Serge’s comment one step further and explain it a bit.
A week ago Google posted that they’re planning to implement algorithm change targeted at fighting sites with copied content. Yesterday, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s spam team confirmed the focus on fighting “content farms” and added a couple of details. Later yesterday Chris Crum of WebProNews, questioned the content far focus of the update. Here’s a few other good sources on the matter:
So what are my my thoughts after going through some research?
- Write original content, don’t copy content from other sites (even with a link back to the original). Quotes with a backlink should be fine.
- Stay away from “keyword density” state of mind. It used to be that the more keywords you have on a page, the more relevant your site is in Google’s eyes. No longer the case. Now Google may treat repetitive phrases as spam attempt. Just write naturally and don’t bother about keyword frequency on a page. This point is further clarified here.
Other than that, it’s business as usual:
- expand your site consistently by writing original content (blog posts, white papers, press releases),
- get links from sites with similar orientation (industry), which will show that your site is a valuable resource in that industry,
- pay attention to anchor text in links pointing to your site, make it relevant where possible (where you can control it).
Please feel free to share your experiences on recent algorithm changes in the comments to this post.
6 Comments
Thank you for every other excellent post. The place else could anybody get that type of info in such an ideal approach of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I’m on the search for such info.
Google likes the authority site which includes expert written content and complete with a great deal of content.
This is bushtit statement, still I see crap websites coming on top. For example if you search ‘HTML tutorial” then you will find many good site coming at lower rank, I don’t think google can put that much intelligence in the search engine which can differential two pages from quality point of view. If you have same title, same description and right usage of keywords then from my point of view, it can not necessarily be a quality content. I don’t know what algorithm has been applied, and for other technical guys as well it will remain a question.
However google has a monopoly and we have to live with it until yahoo and bing does not start giving them a tough competition and users show their interest with other search engines.
I can’t say this is anything but good news.
Spencer, thanks a bunch for stopping by! Looked at your website (looks awesome!), you’re a designer at Shaw. Are you in Calgary then?
Great comment and the link! Thanks a bunch, Aaron!
Seems like Google is getting a lot of flack about how the content farms are starting to take over which, even though they have stated they are always fighting it, have redoubled efforts to combat the webspam.
You know it’s bad when StackOverflow is having a bit of a conniption, and they can even ask Matt Cutts for his help!
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-house-of-google.html
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