Some of you may have noticed that Google rolled out an update on the 8th January 2014 causing ranking fluctuations for many websites.
It has been reported that this could quite possibly be the 6th largest update in a year causing panic for online business owners.
Regardless of the rumours that spun around the SEO industry, the update was not Penguin related and did not target exact match keywords and over optimisation of anchor text links from other websites, although it seems this is one aspect that the update did start to penalise.
Google is starting to develop and become very clever at analysing content on the pages of your website. Quality content with correctly optimised images speaks a thousand words to Google but keep it natural!
It is now more important than ever to use longtail variations of your keywords for more organic content, page titles and page urls.
Tips
- Do not over optimise your header tags – instead use a variation of the keyword you are targeting so that it is more natural in Google’s eyes.
- Keep the site natural – again be sure to use variations and synonyms of your target keywords throughout the entire website.
- Do not focus on gaining lots of links each month – the quality of links is more important that the quantity, focus on sourcing high quality links rather than panicking about the number of links.
- Ensure your website has the most important pages for good user experience – these include an ‘about us’ page, ‘contact us,’ page and even a ‘terms and conditions’page.
Overall the first 2014 update hasn’t had too much of an affect that cannot be corrected and saved. If you have been affected try making your site more natural by removing exact match keywords including H1 tags from your website and attempt to contact any websites linking back to yours with exact match keywords – swap them for variations for a more natural approach to link building and on-page optimisation.
If you require help with your SEO, feel free to contact us for a website analysis and to speak to an SEO expert today.
