Making Google work for you means understanding how its search mechanisms function. Known in the business as algorithms, these are complicated programs that crawl the information on the web, seeking out what someone is looking for, marrying up bits of data to provide the closest answer to their search.
In The Early Days
When search engines first came along, it was easy to manipulate them. All it required were a few keywords inserted into the website, for Google to find them, and bring that particular website to the top of the search results. If you’re a money lender, these keywords may have been ‘payday loans’; ‘loans’; ‘money lender’; ‘advance loan’ – and the like. It really was that simple. Stuff your site with keywords, and Google would find you and present you to anyone who was looking for your services.
And there you would sit, happily at the top of the search results page for your chosen keyword, until Google next changed its criteria (which would sometimes be several weeks or months away).
Then They Got Wiser
Fast-forward to now – there are millions of websites. And whatever field you’re in, there will be countless competitors looking for the same business. And it’s no longer acceptable to present a website to a potential customer, just because it’s stuffed full of the ‘right’ words.
Google need to be sure that their recommendations are quality, relevant and reputable. So how do they do it, whilst ensuring a fairer and more relevant market?
The Answer Is via Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird Algorithms!
Panda is concerned with the quality of a site’s content. Any content ‘lifted’ from another site will ensure your site is penalised. The same goes for a site that appears to be a ‘content farm’ – again – a site stuffed full of content with no regard for the quality – just to make it appear authoritative.
Another way to fall down is to ‘over-optimise’ your site by using keywords willy-nilly (over-stuffing). In reality, Panda can’t assess the ‘quality’ of your site, as that’s a human skill. However, using its set of algorithms, it can differentiate between high and low-quality content and apply the penalties or rewards from there.
Penguin algorithm looks for web spam, (pages that deliberately use tactics that are against Google guidelines). These could be anything from keyword stuffing through to paid links.
Just like Panda, Google’s Penguin will use its robotic spiders and bots to ‘crawl’ every page, attempting to identify anything suspicious. If it finds something, it will erase them from the index, ensuring they don’t rank in any search query. Another way of looking at it may be to refer to the ‘backlink’ quality. This means if the links to your site are from other poor domains, or are ‘spammy’ – you’ll be penalised.
Hummingbird is a detailed algorithm that looks at each individual word in a search query. This means the entire sentence meaning is taken into account. Hummingbird also looks at why people are seeking something out, not just what they are looking for.
For example – someone may ask about the calories in a slice of pizza. 15 years ago – they’d have got a list of calories. Today, thanks to Hummingbird, they may get a list of calories, some suggestions where to buy pizza and a link to a dieting club in case they’re worried about their calorie intake. It’s not just about directly responding with a literal answer, but rather about anticipating the intent behind the queries. And that’s something all SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) specialists should now bear in mind when optimising their client’s sites.
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