In the last few years, Google released major updates to its search engine algorithm, including the “Panda,” “Penguin,” “Pigeon,” “Payday,” “Pirate,” and “Mobile Friendly” upgrades. These algorithm changes often leave digital marketers and search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners scrambling to adapt, especially when their websites suddenly drop in Google search rankings.
Even as an expert marketer, you may never come to know what is stored on Google’s To-Do List. And even when the updates are out, Google does not like acknowledging them. Well, that is what we call the trade secrets.
If you do not want your website to get smacked by Google updates anytime soon, you need to diligently follow the following guidelines:
#1- Always engage yourself in the White Hat SEO Tactics – There are many SEO companies who are always on the fast track mode to appease their clients and this is where they start indulging in the black hat and grey hat marketing strategies. Such companies not only doom their own efforts but also fail online businesses in a terrible way. The effect is seen as and when the Google updates strike with full force. Only white hat marketing strategies work in a great way. You should not go for the deceptive redirects, or buying the backlinks. You should not be creating any seedy backlinks. Your website is the face of your business, and it should not show any negative face to your potential customers. Refrain from the black hat and grey hat activities. This is for your own good.
#2 – Go Only for Quality Content – It is important that you are focusing only on the quality content and not writing something around the set of keywords. It is not going to help you and moreover, the search engines will be ready to penalize you just in case you are busy creating content around the keywords and stuffing them continuously. Today’s Google is focused on semantic search, in which keywords, apart from the user intent and contextual meaning, can impact the results for specific search engine queries.
#3 – Make it sure that your website is free from redundancy- Is your website relying excessively on the AJAX and Javascript technology? It shows that your website is heavy and will take a lot of time to upload. Similarly, if the website has many pages and quite dense paragraphs, the website will become quite problematic to upload on servers. When Google’s updates are out, you are the first one to go down and your competitors will have a fair chance to move up.
Finally, since there is an increase in the user base and more people are glued to their mobile screens, it is significant to find what type of experience the users are getting on their mobile screens, and how this experience is different from the websites. Testing and customer surveys will help in understanding more about the user experience as much as it would prepare the online business owners to understand how the Google search engine updates are going to affect the things.
