Since late 2004, Google has periodically changed its search algorithms to provide better experience and more relevant results for Google search users.The latest changes came early this month, and there are 4 changes you need to know about.
Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content
Google says: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
What this mean to you is that on-page SEO will now require more than just an optimized title tag. This latest change means you need to pay more attention to the content on site pages and make sure it is optimized for search terms. Keywords in your page text should be bold (at least for the first two instances), and/or used in subheadings.
You should also check to make sure that your images have alt tags with your keywords in them.
Fresher, more recent results
Google says: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
What this means to you is that static websites will not cut it any more. Add a blog if you want to satisfy Google’s appetite for fresh content. A blog also makes good business sense for your readers, as it helps them to better understand your company and what you do. You should also use your blog to educate your prospects by providing not only great, interesting blog content, but also by offering free ebooks, or downloads, or case studies.
Social media is also playing a bigger role int he search engines now. In fact, what YOU see in the Google search results and what I see when searching the sdame phrase may now be very different, depending on our locations and our social media engagement.
Better page titles in search results
Google says: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
This means we need to do more in-depth keyword research, and be more creative when asking for incoming links. Simply wrapping your link around anchor text with the same two keywords won’t be effective anymore.
Refining official page detection
Google says: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
Forget about posting the same article all over the web to get more inbound links. Post good content on your site and do guest blogging on other sites (with original content).
Conclusion
The latest changes in the Google search algorithm continues the trend to give more value to fresh, authoritative content. Don’t try to game the system! Use original content that your visitors will find to be relevant and useful, encourage them to take action with a variety of calls-to-action, and let the search engines do their thing. Focus on delivering fresh, original, and relevant content to your users.
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