Google Algorithm Updated

Everyone wants top rankings for their website and most people use search engines to find what they are looking for. We all know that if your website is not in the top of a search engine that you will miss out on prospective clients, however as you also know getting these top ranks are not easy. We almost all know in some form what SEO (search Engine Optimisation) is, even if we have not got a clue how to do it. But whether we have done it ourselves or got someone to do it for us you will know that a one of hit will not fit the bill especially when search engines make changes make changes to their algorithms (this is the special formula that SE’s used to rank your site in the search engine results pages [SERPs]). Sometimes these tweaks are minor while other times they are huge and the impact is far reaching for all online users.

Google has made an algorithmic change, which, looks for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. Apparently this is not a flyby night minor change either as Google have stated it is a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which suggests that sites getting less traffic will still be indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic. Google have said they will not be rolling it back.

So where does this leave your average small to medium sized business owner? Well if you have an ecommerce site using a structure that has longtail keywords for pages less viewed, you need to check your stats and see if you were in fact impacted by the update (did you lose traffic from some long tail phrases), also check out your linking practices ensure all links have been obtained using whitehat techniques. Another very important thing to do to help yourself now is check your link strategy out and ensure you are passing link juice to your internal pages.

Make sure all pages have unique good quality information (if you do ecommerce, this is definitely for you do not just use the manufacturers materials) and if you do not use them currently or have not used your social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for a while now is the time as this will help you to build links to internal pages and get traffic throughput to them. Most savvy Business owners realise they can not rely purely on Google or any search engine for that matter for traffic and that social media sites can help boost their business’ exposure. Finally do not go mad do not change everything in the hopes of fixing something that may not even affect you, use your stats and above all common sense.

This is not the end of Long Tail Keywords however good optimisation is really important to your continued online success now, forget how to change, manipulate or find a way around the algorithm changes instead work with it and fix your SEO efforts accordingly by making consistent updates to your content, posting high quality articles that have been optimised on to a well designed site that has also be optimised is the winning game plan here. This does not mean that your rank will be the same indefinitely it does mean that you do work a bit harder and a bit differently to consistently keep you business in front of potential customers.

Google Latest Update Provides Best Results

At the end of May, Google released an update to their search algorithm-dubbed “Mayday” by most-that affects natural search engine rankings, especially for what are known as “long-tail keywords”. In looking at this Mayday update, we will ask the question: Are these Google updates “fair and balanced”?

The “Mayday” moniker for this Google algorithm seems altogether appropriate. We picture people on a sinking ship yelling “Mayday”. And there are many people on this proverbial sinking ship. People from around the Internet are saying that they lost about 80% of their traffic since this update and many of these people are referring to pages that focused on long-tail keywords.

As you know, Google frequently updates their algorithm to improve search results. The Mayday update carries with a significant change for how Google returns search results for “long tail keywords”.

An example of a long-tail keyword would be something like this: “Apple iPod Touch 32gb 3rd generation review.”

Deal between Facebook and Microsoft

Today's deal between Facebook and Microsoft, which allows Microsoft's Bing search engine to incorporate your Facebook "like" data into its relevance rankings, illustrates how the balance of power on the Internet is shifting from search to social networking.

Microsoft got interested in search in 2003 for a lot of reasons, not least because it saw how Google was shaping the behavior of Internet users.

In user testing and from various data collection systems like the MSN toolbar, Microsoft noticed that a lot of users started each Web surfing session by entering a search term into Google, and returned to the site throughout the day. Google's blank white page was becoming the de facto start page for the Internet.

For a lot of people, that's changed.

For instance, a reporter at a major daily paper recently told me that her company no longer spends a lot of time on search engine optimization – that is, trying to get stories to show up high in Google's search results. Instead, they've found that a ton of traffic is now coming from Facebook (and to a lesser degree, Twitter).

So now they're focused on trying to write the kinds of stories that will get lots of people to post them on their Facebook pages. (Which is what they should have been doing anyway – writing interesting stories that appeal to lots of people. Imagine that.)

Today's deal brings the power of that anecdote home. Google's algorithm will continue to be great when searching for pure information with no particular agenda. But what about figuring out what movie to see this weekend? Or finding out when Neil Young has a cool new video and accompanying album? Or getting instant recommendations on a plumber to fix your suddenly broken water heater? In each of those cases, I got the answer from my Facebook friends.

These are the kinds of commerce-related questions that power Google's revenue today, as they're most likely to get users to click on related advertisements. But as more users turn to Facebook to answer these kinds of questions, advertisers will follow. Microsoft gets this transition, and is more than happy to speed it along.