May 19, 2011

Google Algorithm Update

Posted by Wendy Weber

According to a piece by Danny Goodwin in Search Engine Watch, there are reports that websites have started to see a recovery from the drop in traffic that ensued from Google’s Panda Update: click here.

Here are specific changes that were implemented that resulted in a resurgence of search traffic and higher Google rankings:

-Firing one SEO firm and hiring another company to acquire backlinks. We now know that low quality links can hurt your rankings.
-Hiring four copywriters to write original, SEO-friendly product descriptions. Websites must decide what keywords they want to rank for, and write copy around those keywords that is unique, topic-focused, well-written, and checked for spelling and grammar.
-Restructuring bloated pages to increase page load speed. Google has been preaching about making the web faster for two years, most recently in April releasing Page Speed Online.
-Duplicate content has been removed.
Using the canonical tag to return one preferred URL location (e.g.,www.example.com vs. example.com/ vs. www.example.com/index.html vs. example.com/home.asp.
-Making “better use” of 301 redirects (moved permanently).
-Adding noindex meta tags to SERP-like pages and tag clouds.
-Improving page load times.

In