With its recent major algorithm change(nicknamed "Farmer"),
Google has made a significant effort to improve the rankings of high-quality
Web sites in its search results, and to reduce the visibility of low-quality
sites. What does this mean for SEO now and how does it change the content
landscape? Kelly Andersson,
experienced writer and website developer, talks about this new algorithm's
impact on search, ranking, and elancers.
Google regularly adjusts its search function – the algorithm programming that determines what you find when you search for something. These algorithm changes are almost never noticed; the February 2011 change, though, devastated some websites' rankings – and thus their traffic. The change was made to reduce the high rankings of content farms on the search engine result pages (SERPs) and to move sites with quality content up in the rankings. And it worked.
Why Did Google Do This?
In short: user feedback. Customers complained that sites with poor quality content ranked too high on Google pages. Content farms such as Associated Content, Wisegeek.com, and Mahalo.com were targeted for ranking reductions, and they took big hits. Companies with websites that "gamed" Google (and were good at it) ranked high, and Google fixed that. The plan was to reduce the rankings of sites with duplicate content and low quality content – those with a low ratio of content to ads, and those that were identified with "poor user experience."
How did they do that? They asked people.
"We wanted to keep it strictly scientific," said Amit Singhal, Google Fellow. They sent documents to outside testers, using their evaluation system to rate site content. "We asked the raters questions like: 'Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?'"
Matt Cutts, principal engineer at Google, said their company goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. He said the update was designed to provide better rankings for high-quality sites, those with "original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis."
Article Marketing Is History:
Rob Fore, who calls himself a "Multiple Six-Figure MLM Network Marketing Online Entrepreneur," titled a recent blog post, "Google Algorithm Change Kills Article Marketing." Site owners and "marketing gurus" used to game the system by submitting a lot of articles to authority sites – those with good SERPs rankings – then creating dozens or hundreds of backlinks to that page. This strategy worked like a charm. But many of those "authority sites" are now buried several pages down in search results.
Tricks like this don't work any more. Website owners and internet marketers will eventually realize that low quality content and links from poorly ranking sites or content farms will actually damage a website's ranking.
Why Is Ranking Important?
Websites with great Google ranking are successful websites. Top ranking on a Google result page will usually garner between 20 and 30 percent of that page's clicks, according to Adam Bunn, SEO director of Greenlight, an award-winning SEO consulting firm. Though content farms saw their rankings plummet, there were also winners in the dust-up; if a site that previously ranked No. 1 in results fell to No. 30, then 29 other sites moved up a notch.
PC Magazine reported that traffic on some sites dove by 50 percent. Theteacherscorner.net, a 13-year-old site with millions of monthly pageviews and thousands of pages of content for teachers, saw its traffic fall by 40 percent; their ad revenue was cut in half.
What To Do If Your Site Lost Rank:
First, carefully evaluate every page on your site and get rid of the junk. Low-quality pages will hurt you – no matter what's on the rest of your site.
Google launched a user forum for site owners to discuss the results – and the forum was quickly swarmed with posts lamenting the dramatic drop in ranking. Google staff have told site owners all along that the quality of a site's content is of paramount importance, but it seems many site owners ranked "gaming the system" ahead of quality content.
Low quality pages on one part of a site will affect the overall ranking of that site, according to Google. One website owner on the forum complained about his drastic drop in rank, but admitted that many pages on his site have almost no content and are relatively worthless. He argued that this shouldn't count against him. But Google has decided that a website with a prize-winning front page and 29 pages of fluff just isn't going to rank well against a website with 10 sterling pages of useful content.
Delete the Fluff and Add New Focused Content:
Sites that specialize in quality niche content (original and in-depth information on a focused topic) now rank better than sites with broad content on hundreds of different topics. The plethora of internet marketing "experts" who sell schemes for building rank have persuaded gullible site owners that "baby information for parents" is a niche. It's not. Making your own nutritious baby food at home might be a niche, but "baby information" is a Grand-Canyon-sized chasm of content.
Focus your content, and focus on your audience. Delete the chaff from your site; eliminate all unnecessary and not-so-useful content. Keep only what is relevant, original, and useful. Re-writing content just enough to pass copyscape won't get you good rankings any more. In fact, it can bury you. Replace the fluff with what Google wants – and what your customers want.
Don't Complain About Your Ranking Loss, Fix It:
One site owner complained that she lost 40 percent of her traffic in a week. "I want to know why Google named us low quality," she said. Well, it's easy to see why. Pick a page at random from her site, copy a paragraph, run it through plagium.com – you'll find other sites using the same content. The site calls itself the "largest online nutrition community run by registered dieticians," but it's jam-packed with ads, offers, useless flash, and more ads.
Take Google's advice – analyze your content. One user on the forum complained, "I am totally baffled as to what has occurred with my site ... I have lost at least 2/3 of my traffic and revenue ... My content has always been totally original and written by me." But a quick check on plagium.com turns up 18 other sites using just about the same content.
Protect Your Original Content:
One user on the Google forum complained that their ranking was significantly affected, but said, "The site has been scraped many times over the years but all content is original." And another: "My content is constantly scraped and duplicated. I just did a search for a unique piece of an article I wrote, and turned up 2,500+ copies."
If your content is scraped or copied or stolen, don't just feel sorry for yourself, go after the thieves. Run a WHOIS search at networksolutions.com, contact the ISP hosting the site, and demand that your content be removed from that site.
Hire A Pro:
One unhappy user on the Google forum wrote, "I am so devastated. My main site and my life's work was drastically affected. I am not a learned webmaster, I write all my own content and work my site 80 hours a week. I do everything myself."
If you're not sure how to fix your site's rankings, hire a professional – there are thousands of them right here on Elance. If you can't write stellar content yourself, hire someone who can. If you're confused about quality content and useless content, consult with a pro and make your site the best it can be. Focus on content – well written content that is useful from top to bottom on every page.
If you're a provider on Elance, you can help your clients by understanding what Google did and how to improve a website with original quality content. And you can rescue your own website ranking – or make it even better – by hiring the right people.
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