Newest Developments in Google search
Recently, Cutts answered questions at the Search Marketing Expo 2013 (SMX Advanced) in the popular “You&I” format, where he addressed specific questions from the audience on the newest Google search updates. He discussed how more than 500 algorithm changes are done every year, and how it’s always been a difficult thing to pick what to share with the public. He also noted how Penguin 1 affected entire sites, whereas Penguin 2 targets more specifically and can impact individual pages.
In terms of penalties, Cutts discussed how Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) plans on using example URLS that will be sent manually, will contain two or three examples and show webmasters exactly what is wrong and what needs to be changed. If their is a change or update that will directly affect a webmaster’s site, they will be notified by Google Webmaster Central.
Cutts also sat down in an interview with Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting in early July to discuss the topics of link building and how to approach web marketing today. He stated that not all link building is bad; if the quality of the content is good, then more people will be attracted to it. Most of the time, it is approached in the exact opposite way, where people try to get high traffic before creating quality content.
The theme that emerged from the interview is that “SEO is moving steadily towards becoming more of a traditional marketing-type discipline”, according to Enge. Cutts stated:
“SEO used to be this thing that people thought of as happening in the dark corners of the web where you could do anything you wanted and magically, you’d get more search traffic. More importantly, they thought they could do anything they wanted and it wouldn’t impact their brand. For example, they could publish crappy content, and since no one ever read it, it didn’t matter”.
Enge supports Cutts statement by saying that many people do indeed focus on getting links to increase their Google search rankings, instead of focusing on creating a high-quality website that visitors will want to tell their friends about, whichis the secret to getting better, more reliable search rankings. Enge stated:
” There are a number of elements, but let’s talk about the concept that a good content marketing plan is using multiple channels for communication, like social media channels, content on a brand’s own site, guest posting on authoritative sites, giving and getting interviews and so on”.
Let’s be honest, SEO matters primarily for Google rankings, and Google has very particular ways of knowing that you’re important enough to be ranked. In Copy Bloggers e-book “The 10 Rock Solid Elements of Effective Online Marketing“, they bring awareness to the fact that Google knows when and how many people link to you, and they have links to index and rank those web pages.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) also has a massive amount of big data that shows exactly what you spend time doing online, thanks to programs like Google Toolbar, Analytics, Feedburner, Google Reader, Gmail and many more that keep you logged-in to your Google account. All of this data is used to determine if whatever content you are creating is worthy of higher rankings in Google search. Matt Cutts states in the e-book, “To rank well, build a site so fantastic that it makes you an authority in your niche”.
With constant updates and new methods of enhancing the digital web for users and web masters, SEO becomes stronger and gains value in the list tools used to create higher traffic. And with a focus shifting towards content marketing, new steps must be taken in order to succeed.
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