If you are, you’ll need to invest in SEO. It’s how you’ll rank high on search lists, which is important if you want to gain visibility and credibility. Why manage a beautiful website if it gets buried on page five of the SERP results?
To prepare, you’ll need to understand the major Google updates for SEO. Don’t worry, we’ve already listed them right here for you. Read this breakdown below to learn more:
Google Sandbox
This is an unofficial update that people assume is a real thing. The company never confirmed nor denied its existence but it’s always possible that the search engine pushes new websites down the SERP intentionally.
Sandbox ensures that they go through the usual routes, over a few weeks, to build credibility. While a brand new site may contain truthful and useful information, this possible update serves as a kind of probation that sites need to break free from.
Google Panda (2011)
Over a decade ago, people used to cheat the system by plagiarizing content, stuffing keywords repeatedly on a page, and filling pages with too many ads. All of these problems stacked, ruining user experience (UX).
Google Panda remedied this by penalizing websites that consistently practiced these bad habits.
For many, this is the first of the big major updates for Google’s algorithm. This was the turning point where Google’s updates started focusing on user intent and information relevance instead of word-to-word keyword matching.
Penguin (2012)
Penguin is like the younger sibling to Google Panda, again targeting tactics that try to outsmart the algorithm instead of focusing on providing relevant information to users.
This update, however, focused heavily on the quality of links.
Link-spamming and the use of link farms decreased after this update came out. Google can now check where links come from and how a strong link gained its credibility.
Hummingbird (2013)
This update altered how Google looked at keywords. There was now a stronger focus on the intent behind the words instead of solely relying on the search query. Google could now check relevance based on synonyms, similar searches, and semantic indexing.
If someone searched “how does Google work,” the SERP list would no longer include irrelevant answers. You won’t see links that focus on “Google work” or “what is Google” anymore since those aren’t as relevant to the query.
Pigeon (2014)
It didn’t take long for the folks at Google to realize people want to locate local businesses. The Pigeon update made this a whole lot easier. It altered the algorithm to reward local business sites that have a strong SERP visibility.
How do you work with this in mind? Make sure to sign up and claim your Google My Business account, fill up the local address and contact information, and make sure to optimize for local search queries.
Don’t forget to check the information you put across the Internet. The phone number, address, and links you put on your website should be the same on Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, and any other platform.
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