Google SEO Update

Google SEO can be incredibly beneficial to the online presence of your company. Optimization takes some time and work based on things such as the quality of your site’s content, the keywords placed within your text, the amount of credible website links within your site, etc. as you crawl your way to the top of the search engine’s lists.

Google’s ranking optimization algorithm has gone through many changes since its launch. These changes have made “loop holes” harder for those that try to find their way around the algorithm and jump to the top of the list without putting in the proper work.

Most Recent Google Algorithm Updates

In past years, Google has made many amends to its algorithm. You may have heard of the following –

• Panda (2011 update): The focus of Panda is quality of content. The higher the quality of the content on your website, the higher your ranking position will be.
• Penguin (2012 revision): This revised algorithm is similar to Panda; however, it focuses more on the links used by your site as well those that point to an exterior website.
• Hummingbird (2013 rework): This complete rework of Google’s algorithm hones in on the keywords that are used to search for different items/ services.

Other revisions have been made; however, these are the biggest in the past few years.

What’s New

Google continually improves its SEO optimization algorithm. The most recent change was rolled out this August, August 2018. There are many factors that Google takes into account when bumping up a website on their searches/ listings. In August, the Medic Update was rolled out. This is Google’s attempt at promoting previously underrated sites. The core of this update live up to its name as it is centered on the health and medical industry. The August update heavily focused on E-A-T (expertise, authority and trust), aka, creating credibility through online variations such as citing research, linking in experts on subject matter, etc.

This August update, in conjunction with other improvements that were rolled out in March and April revolve around brand authority. Google’s hope was to bump up your SEO based on how your brand was resonating with consumers (great experience on your site, links, mentions of your company, etc.).

The newest amendment that will diversify businesses’ online rankings is mobile-first indexing. Indexing, in this case, is the process of Google taking a tab of the sites that you visit and how frequently you do so. It stores this information and uses it to provide search recommendations to users. Mobile-indexing is a little different as it doesn’t necessarily use a ranking system. The process focuses on more mobile friendly content from your previously visited page vs. the desktop version; therefore, the content may be different causing some issues for a company’s ranking. If the company has a mobile-friendly version with content closely matching that of the desktop version, there probably won’t be any changes. If this content is condensed and the mobile version is lacking information that is available on the desktop website, there may be some critical ranking signals missing. This would cause the page’s rank to be lower.

If you have any questions or need some more guidance, feel free to contact Mr. Pipeline today at (561) 899-3043 or Info@MrPipeline.com