Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as "Allegra", has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions. Major updates like this can happen a few times a year at Google, which is why picking the right search engine optimization company can be the difference between online success and failure. However, it becomes an increasingly difficult decision when SEO firms themselves are suffering from the Allegra update.
Over-optimization may have played the biggest part in the dropping of seo-guy.com from the top 50 Google results. Filtering out web sites that have had readability sacrificed for optimization is a growing trend at Google. It started with the Sandbox Effect in late 2004, where relatively new sites were not being seen at all in the Google results even with good keyword placement in content and incoming links. Many thought it was a deliberate effort by Google to penalize sites that had SEO work done. It's a few months later and we see many of the 'sandboxed' web sites finally appearing well for their targeted keywords.
With 44 occurrences of 'SEO' on the relatively short home page of seo-guy.com, and many of them in close proximity to each other, the content reads like a page designed for search engine robots, not the visitor. This ranking shift should come as no surprise to SEO professionals as people have been saying it for years now: Sites should be designed for visitors, not search engine robots. Alas, some of us don't listen and this is what happens when search engines finally make their move.
One aspect of search engine optimization that is also affected in a roundabout way is link popularity development. After observing the effects of strictly relevant link exchanges on many of our client's sites recently, we've noticed incredibly fast #1 rankings on Google. It seems Google may be looking out for links pages designed for the sole purpose of raising link popularity and devalues the relevance of the site. After all, if a links page on a real estate site has 100 outgoing links to pharmacy sites, there has to be a lot of content on that page completely unrelated to real estate. Not until now has that been so detrimental to a site's overall relevance to search terms. It goes back to the old rule of thumb: Make your visitors the top priority. Create a resources page that actually contains useful links for your site users. If you need to do reciprocal linking then keep it relevant and work those sites in with other good resources.
Keeping up with the online search world can be overwhelming for the average small business owner or corporate marketing department. Constant Google changes, MSN coming on the scene in a big way, and all the hype around the new Become.com shopping search function can make heads spin. But just keep things simple and follow the main rules that have been around for years. Google, as well as other search engines, won't ever be able to ignore informative, well written content along with good quality votes from other web sites.
Google has announced some Adwords display url enforcement policies that could affect your campaigns. Most notably, Google wants your display url to be exactly the same as your destination url. You can not have two different display urls that lead to the same destination url. Basically they want to make sure that your when your visitor clicks on your ad that they land on the same root domain that was in the display url. Not really a major change, they are saying they really want you to abide by these rules now, and that you have until April 1st to make any changes necessary to keep your campaigns running above board.
If you are violating the new enforcement, you need to transition your ads carefully, so there is not a major impact to your quality score. Changing the display urls on your current ads will have an immediate impact on your quality score for those ads. When you change the display url, the ad will in effect become a new ad, and your quality score for the old ad copy will be reduced, giving you a new quality score. So what you should do is create ad clones of your old ads with a new rule compliant display url, while letting the old ads run. This will allow the new ads to get an ad history before you need to rely on them. Then when you have sufficient ad history, and the quality score is good, pause your old ads that are violating the rules. By the time April 1st rolls around, you should have everything under control. You can also just change your current ads if they aren't that important or not running much volume, and they should adopt their old quality score in a relatively short period of time.
You shouldn't be scared of changing your ad copy because you fear losing quality score. Changing your ad copy can result in improving the quality score of your keywords in the long term which should lower your bids and increase your profit margins. Considering that a keywords quality score is affected by the average history of all ads related to it, you can really help your bids by improving your ad copy. However, if you feel that your copy is at or near perfection, changing it may not be necessary, and the short term quality score effects could lead to higher cpc and/or ad placement changes. Most of the time, you want to make changes to copy in the beginning of a campaign and let the ad have time to gather history. If your campaign is not doing well, there are many factors besides the copy that are probably affecting its efficacy.
Both Doug Smith & Robert Thomson are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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