Google's Latest Algorithm Changes and How It Can Affect Your Website

Search Engine giant Google has tweaked its algorithms in a bid to make search results cleaner, more informative and more relevant. The goal for the company has been to penalize websites which are ‘over optimized’. Codenamed “Panda” this algorithm change will lower the rank of ‘low-quality sites’ and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. Matt Cutts the brain behind Google claims that the changes would give internet users the ultimate experience while using the search engine. There have been many takes on the changes with some even writing obituary for Search Engine Optimization but the company clearly states it is not against ‘white hat SEO’ techniques. Tricksters will likely face the heat of the moment while genuine optimization with sail through.

What Are The Improvements?

•It’s All about Freshness – Fresh content will figure on top of the results pages and the search engine claims this new trend is likely to affect 35% search results. What this means corporate websites which don’t update their content regularly are not likely to meet the cut. You can overcome this problem using a blog and writing regular posts. But make sure that the content is unique or else you won’t be able to draw the mileage.

•Local Results – This is something that most search engines including Google have tried to perfect over the years. The new system allows it to smartly detect both queries and documents which are local to the user. So irrelevant page views are likely to come down and you will see much more targeted traffic to your website.

•PageRank Downgraded – Over the years most website optimizers went gaga over PageRank and this was touted as a benchmark of quality and popularity of the website. However the latest changes have downgraded the importance of PageRank. If your website didn’t have a high PageRank and it worried you it is time to relax!

•Official Page Detection – Some official websites had to face the heat from SE optimizers and their website would rank lower than those which copied their content. But the new change will give weightage to the official page. You don’t need to spend your time and effort posting the same content everywhere in a bid to get backlinks. Others who copy your content will drive more traffic to your website.

Should You Be Worried?

The answer is both ‘Yes’ and a ‘No’. Websites which have relied too much on optimization (read black hat techniques) are likely to see the maximum impact on their websites. The new algorithm change will affect websites which have too many keywords on a page; too many backlinks to a site and most importantly irrelevant content which doesn’t meet user’s expectations are likely to see a sharp decline in their rankings. So if you haven’t used any unfair means to scale up your rankings you need not be worried plus you are likely to benefit from more targeted traffic to the website and have a higher conversion rate.

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