What Google's Search Algorithm Update Means For Marketers: An Interview with Dan Biggs, Digital Strategist

Nov. 25, 2011

Many of you have heard of Google's recent
update to its search algorithm. Google search algorithm and marketing
The search algorithm change has caused
quite a stir in the SEO space, and many marketers (some of which are undoubtedly
daunted by the mere mention of the word 'algorithm') are still trying to figure out
what exactly the update means for their business.

We're joined today by Dan Biggs, Digital Strategist at Station X Communications. Dan, the ever-talented (but always humble!) SEO expert will take us through the ins and outs of Google's search algorithm updates.

M: There has been a lot of buzz lately around Google’s change to its search algorithm – Dan, can you explain what is involved in the update?

D: The first recent change was called "Panda" and was rolled out around the world in April 2011. The main target of the Panda update was to try to reduce what they consider "webspam" - an entire team at Google is focused on this, because relevancy of their search results is of utmost importance. It's true, in my opinion, that their results were becoming bogged down with less-than valuable results. The algorithm change tries to get rid of sites that are considered "content farms", sites that use various methods to post tons of content and flood the results -using scrapers, distributed editorial teams and all sorts of other strategies. Huffington Post, Demand Media and sites like that are well known ones. Here's a video that illustrates their technique: http://youtu.be/s6q7np6cya0.

The most recent update in the Panda saga took place on November 18, and it could be argued that while it's not as fundamental a change as the one back in April, it has more significant impact as it affects about 35% of searches. Google has indicated that they've given more value to pages covering hot topics and very recent events. Basically, sites that provide the most up-to-date information about any topic will get more prominence. Of course this only applies to sites that pay the cost of entry by being considered "high-quality" by the Google algorithm which means that content farms would theoretically be disqualified from manipulating this. This isn't that new, because Google's had what they call QDF or Query Deserved Freshness for a few years now, so this update is working to refine that and place more importance on freshness.

M: How might this update have an impact on marketers?

D: It's a pretty exciting time right now in the SEO world, and things are changing very fast with social search, Bing's growing market share, Google's algorithm updates and lots of other developments. If a marketer is serious about SEO, they're going to already be well aware that fresher is better when it comes to anything on the web. Googlebot loves shiny objects. It's been the case for years that if you update your site more often, Googlebot will visit you more often. Nothing has changed there, except maybe now Googlebot will be visiting a bit more often. I think this is definitely going to have a negative impact on marketers that aren't working to develop fresh and interesting content. Their SEO may have suffered before, but it's going to be much worse now.

M: Could you provide some quick tips and tactics that marketers can use to update their SEO/content strategies to leverage the update for their benefit?

D: I'd start by getting a solid content strategy and some sort of owned media platform if you don't already have one, whether it's a news section or a blog on your site. Nobody with a static site that doesn't get updated at least once a day is going to benefit from this update.

M: If there’s one piece of advice you could leave with our readers, what would it be?

D: Google built their vast market share because of one thing - relevancy. If your site is frequently pushing out high value content that's relevant to your business, Google will reward you by sending Googlebot to your site to spider it. They'll continue to punish sites for being lazy, scraping and churning content from other sources on the web. My advice is to build a content strategy, and get fresh and relevant content flowing. There's a great little book by Erin Kissane that I recommend reading - it's called The Elements of Content Strategy.

M: Thanks for the insight, Dan! Any closing thoughts?

D: If you want to learn about SEO and stay current with Google's search tools and algorithms, you should also subscribe to the Google Search Team blog.