An Overview of Google Algorithm Updates

An Overview Of Google Algorithm Updates
An Overview Of Google Algorithm Updates

Google Algorithm Updates always were, are, and will continue to terrorize webmasters who only care about site rankings. Yes, Google does play hard, but why is this so when these updates should be aiming to supply the most excellent experience to users and the best results to searchers while also rewarding sites for high-quality material?

A Look Into How Google Algorithms Affect Sites

A Google Algorithm Update is a change in the ranking algorithm requirements. It provides a set of rules on how to examine the quality of websites, allowing  Google to decide how to rank SERPs. Given that Google was introduced in 1998, several algorithm updates have already taken place.

In 2018 alone, Google is said to have had a whopping 3,234 updates. That’s almost nine updates a day, and it is eight times the updates made in 2009. The most recent one was on October 25, 2019.

Of course, many of these thousands of updates were not significantly felt, but the following are the ones that gave significant headaches to many webmasters:

  • Fred
  • Intrusive Interstitials Update
  • Mobilegeddon
  • RankBrain
  • Panda
  • Penguin
  • Hummingbird
  • Pigeon
  • Payday
  • EMD (Exact Match Domain)
  • Page Layout Algorithm

Google Updates and Penalties

Everyone who participates in SEO understands that Google runs and applies more than 200 ranking elements before letting a site get the highest positions on the SERP.

It is challenging to think about even half of Google’s ranking aspects when you conduct a site’s optimization, and some web designers don’t even wish to do this. Instead, they opt for black-hat SEO to get fast outcomes. Their quick high positions ultimately get lost and end with a Google Penalty, which translates to trouble.

A Google Penalty often equates to a negative effect on site rankings, especially after Google carries out a manual evaluation or algorithm update.

If your rankings and traffic unexpectedly become lower in a matter of several days, particularly after a brand-new algorithm update, this typically means that a Google Penalty has been imposed based on brand-new guidelines. You can examine whether your site was penalized in the Google Browser Console. This manner of checking means you must manually review outcomes.

Types of Penalty

There are two kinds of Google Penalty: manual and algorithmic. The very first type applies when there are numerous synthetic links or those of poor quality, thus indicating specific pages of your website are losing vital traffic. The second type occurs when the backlink profile of your entire site needs considerable and immediate auditing and cleaning.

Quality Keywords

From April 28 to May 3, 2010, a specific update was released, focusing on satisfying websites with high-quality long-tail keywords.

Your site gets higher positions on the SERPs, depending on specific long-tail keywords despite poor backlinking profiles. Its primary objective was the significance of the content presented. The best losses came to websites within a particular niche: the ones selling goods generically. They focused mostly on brief-tail keywords, and they went through considerable traffic, and rankings drop once the long-tail keywords became a consideration.

Quality Content

On February 23, 2011, another update rewarded websites with high-quality content and punished low-quality sites. The update ran through the type of articles, extended reviews, long descriptions, a characteristics overview, guidance, and so on. With this update, low-quality material now goes nowhere. Google never ceases to remind webmasters that quality is everything. Heed such words if you wish to be the first and to stay on top for a very long time.

Too Many, Too Unnecessary

A keyword “overdose” will also not help you rank. Too many keywords in your text will be practically detected immediately, simply because Google bots check repetitive words, and too much of the keywords will seem unnatural and suspicious. Expect a penalty coming your way if this happens.

The same problem could happen to the low quantity of material on one of the site’s pages. Google prefers webmasters to spend more time on their content and present thorough elements to searchers. Writing a short paragraph with little sense and yet has many keywords is not an excellent idea.

Google does not like it when content is produced with the aim of only money-making. User experience and quality must always be the goal initially. Absence of authority or trustworthiness plays negatively with rankings, and you can see this by evaluating your website performance: how often is your content upgraded? What is your domain age, type? Do you have authority on what you are writing? Do you have a mediocre or lousy backlink profile? What’s the visitor habits on your site–are they staying or just peeking and leaving immediately? These are the things you ought to check.

Also, if there are so many ads on your site and those are not appropriate to your material or are annoying for a website visitor, you can eventually expect a penalty from the Google Panda Update. The situation might end up being especially risky if the amount of advertisements surpasses the quantity of content (ad-to-content ratio).

Keep Up with Google Algorithm Updates

  1. Deal with the content of your site. Reword your material to make it of high quality; put keywords only in places where their existence is required and use just those keywords which pertain to your specific niche, and specifically to the page you are attempting to enhance.
  2. Forget about advertisements for a bit. Go to sites that are credible and popular and discover their ad profile. How many ads to they have? Are the ads disturbing? Are the ads relevant to the site? Go back to your place and consider the very same points concerning your website.
  3. No black-hat SEO. Honest and “clean” content will bring you success and traffic, therefore heightening your authority. Searchers will notice your site and stay there for a very long time if they like what they see. Google needs nothing more but that.

Take note that in September 2012, The Google Exact Match Domain (EMD) Update focused on websites with domains that exactly duplicate a searchers’ question and then got their sites to the leading position based on that alone.

It’s no longer a warranty at all that you will score for a keyword just since your domain is a specific match. The Penguin Update has made sure of that and penalizes sites that attempt to improve their positions by getting links from poor quality sites and by packing pages with an enormous number of keywords.

Conclusion

Google Algorithm Updates are severe concerns that you must keep a note of if you are in the website industry. Ignoring it would get you nowhere in this industry, and you will only be wasting time, money, resources, and energy.

Keeping up and meeting the updates would be your best chance in this game of website rankings.

If you have any idea that you’d like to get out there, leave your wise words in the box below.

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