Photo Illustration Copyright © Mike Valenitne
Because Google algorithm updates can be so frightening to businesses that rely on search traffic for substantial parts of their income, the named updates Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird and Mobilegeddon were all breathlessly covered by the online business press. Those fears are heightened and this leads to marketing department sense of impending doom at companies that fear they may have SEO shortcomings. It’s as though those marketers have been in a deep sleep and had an SEO nightmare that suddenly jerked them awake, drenched in sweat.
Relax, it was just a bad dream, son. Here’s the thing: most companies that care enough about the potentially horrifying sudden drops in search traffic are not likely to have committed (or have already addressed) the offenses that those frightening algo updates are designed to target. If they are taking the advice of their SEO consultant or in-house SEO, and that SEO specialist is knowledgable and effective – just trust that they are there to protect you, stop your panicking and try to get back to sleep. You’ll need your rest so you can continue to follow your protector’s good advice.
You were already told that you must clean up those spammy links and disavow the domains that refused to remove links and it’s’ been done – right? You were told that page load speed was critical and all that work done to optimize images and the tag management has paid off, hasn’t it? The launch of responsive mobile pages was a great accomplishment for your design team and made all pages look great on mobile devices – and doesn’t that fast loading page give much better user experience on phones too?
After each algorithm update, the SEO community publishes their lists of recommended fixes to chase the scary monster from under the bed. Recently there was a refresh of the Penguin update which has everyone scrambling to fix any unresolved linking issues and dozens of respected members of the SEO community were corralled by SEO Nikolay Stoyanov in a roundup of Penguin 4.0 ranking factors to offer their advice for site owners listing the three most important elements to focus on to protect themselves from any ranking penalties. Each of the assembled experts give good advice meant for those who don’t already have someone to provide that SEO guidance on retainer or on staff.
Do you remember that long ago (pre-Panda) SEO recommendation that you clean up duplicate and thin content? That was a big and foreboding task, but you tackled it before Google bashed those sites that didn’t do it, remember that? Whew! It’s similar to the latest SEO recommendation that you serve your content via secure ssl https and as difficult and as seriously challenging for your team that it is, it’s going to be worth doing it BEFORE Google makes the next announcement that non-secure sites will no longer rank above those that are encrypted – won’t it?.
Photo Illustration © by Mike Valentine
That’s when the online media starts publishing “Secure-ageddon” stories and you breathe a sigh of relief that you have such a Superhero SEO guide supporting your team – right? This is why you have an SEO Expert on staff or on retainer – he uses his superpowers to keep your business safe from Algoron, the Killer SEO Monster.
Mike Valentine does enterprise SEO consulting and start-up SEO internationally
