Changes to the popular search engine Google in April has meant many good websites have seen their Google ranking plummet and websites with no relevant information on the topic being searched on go up the Google listing. Has your website recently seen a drop in its Google ranking? Or has it even been slapped with the dreaded penalty message? If so, then you have most probably fallen victim to the most recent infamous Penguin update by Google. So why is this? Paul Gunter from SEO Essex takes a closer look.
Google have recently changed their Algorithm (or system of ranking websites on Google), which they do on a regular basis. They do this to make sure that the websites that are ranked highly on Google are the most appropriate ones and that people haven’t ‘cheated’ to get themselves ranked more highly.
One of the methods to get your website to rank highly is to join a ‘link network’, which is a website that you can join to create links to your website which would have resulted in your website being ranked more highly in the past. The last few months have seen many link networks, clamped down on by Google, which has resulted in those websites using link networks see a drop in Google ranking, some quite dramatically.
So what is the solution?
Linking is of crucial importance to your website, as Google considers all links to your website as votes of confidence in your site. Therefore, the more votes of confidence, the higher a ranking you deserve. However, the ranking of your website is dependent on a number of things; the number of links to your website, the quality of the sites that they come from, how quickly your site has acquired these links and the anchor text (‘key words’) that are used in your linking sites.
Google takes all of these factors into account when analysing your link profile and are programmed to detect any imbalances such as poor quality links or anchor text, which will then flag up your site as a potential problem.
Good quality and unique web content will always result in others wanting to link to your site naturally, resulting in much-needed natural links. One reoccurring theme amongst sites that have taken a recent hit from the Google Penguin update is that they appear to be dramatically lacking in natural links.
For long-lasting, continually high rankings the road is long and requires patience. The first thing to ensure is that your site is making the very best of exceptional-quality content – this will help to give your number of natural links a fantastic boost.”
By Paul Gunter
SEO Essex
www.seoessex.co.uk