Which changes are relevant to your web page rankings?

The following changes have the biggest impact on the position of your web pages on Google's search result pages:

§  Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. If they appear on the site, it’s also to consider how. This change improves the way those terms are scored. For many sites, this simply means we need to go back and do more advanced keyword research and optimize for different keywords. Keep in mind, many sites took a hit because they were over optimized for too many keywords. Without a lot of unique text on the page, having too many keywords confuses the search engines and will result in a drop in rankings.

§  Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing- putting too many keywords on the page just to rank. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better. The “fix” is to place keywords on the page in a relevant, natural way.

§  More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content. This means they are striving to give users relevant content for the keywords they search. Unfortunately, the results are mixed on this which means more algorithm adjustments are on the way.

§  More domain diversity. Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.

These first two items probably refer to the Penguin and Panda updates that Google released last month. Other items in the update list referred to site links. Some search results might get two layers of site links instead of a text snippet. Google also updated the algorithm for local searches and the way titles are displayed for some pages.

What to do?

Whenever you see a drop in rankings, it’s natural to want to panic. Keep in mind, Google makes mistakes as well. Some of the adjustments they make to their algorithm is to fix these mistakes which means results will “bobble” up and down. Getting good rankings will always depend upon good keyword research (are we focusing on what the customers are typing into the search box?), proper usage of these keywords and a diverse backlink strategy which includes conversations about your business in social media outlets.

A website audit can often identify some of the issues the search engines may be having with your site. If you have concerns, feel free to give us a call. We’ll see how we can help.