Priyanka Shitole
As we know, Google changes its search algorithm hundreds of times each year, although most of these changes are pretty minor. However, some of them change the way businesses are accustomed of doing SEO. Let’s see the recent ones:
| Panda | Penguin | Hummingbird | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Released | Feb 23, 2011 (Last updated in 2014) | April 24, 2012 (Last updated in 2013) | August 2013 |
| Intentions | Target websites with low-quality content and sites with high ad-to-content ratios | Target sites that do not follow Google guidelines and spam Google for ranking | Display search results based on user's actual search intent behind the keywords |
| Impact | Display websites with low-quality content lower in the search results | Display spam website lower in search results or ban it all together | Filter and show more relevant websites |
How to combat frequent SEO changes
Use high-quality content and scrap old and duplicate content, which is considered low quality. Fresh content is not only a great marketing strategy, but also keeps you away from potential Panda penalties. At any rate, keep ad-to-content ratio low and don’t stuff all of your ads into the first fold of your webpage.Keep the ratio high of content to images and videos. Stay away from keyword stuffing. Make content more informational, navigational, and transactional.
Check for negative SEO. It is an ongoing threat and exposes businesses to its side effects. There are three types of “negative SEO:”
- Intentional negative SEO initiated by competitors to sabotage your business.
- Low-quality internal SEO initiated within the company to get more traffic.
- Automated spam websites initiated by third-party sites to get traffic on their site or to access your information or gain in various other ways at your expense.
Remedy? There is no shortcut. It takes time and constant effort:
- Practice safe SEO and link risk management.
- Categorize SEO risk as C-level KPI.
- Perform a health check on incoming and outgoing links, domains and redirect links. Take automated approach for efficiency.
- Focus on the quality of your content and links, not the quantity.
This is the third (and last) part of our crash course in SEO best practices. If you’d like some advice on your SEO, we’re here to help.