In our first blog, we announced the news that Google had made forty changes to the way in which it ranks websites and in this blog, we want to highlight one of the significant changes that could affect you and your website in the near future.
The core message here is for you to brace yourself over the coming weeks!
As we previously mentioned, the initial Panda update was a major challenge not only to us but many SEOs, but we thankfully managed to cope with it, finding the answer to what was a complicated puzzle, on behalf of our clients and all the websites that we provide Search Engine Optimisation for. However, an SEO’s work is never done and we’re already looking at the content of the latest Google changes and what the impact will be across the web.
So what’s caught our eye?
About two months ago we noticed something going on with linking, based on our many years experience and let’s just say, we had a feeling that Google was up to something – and low and behold on their list of forty changes, links takes some prominence and has certainly caught our eye.
As Google have stated,
“We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page.”
What this is saying is that link evaluation is high on Google’s agenda and that they have changed the way in which links are going to be used when indexing pages.
They have also said that they are switching off the method of link analysis that they have used for a number of years, which means there will be some uncertainty for a while as SEOs will want to figure out exactly what it is Google is now looking at.
This change from Google will affect SEOs everywhere, mostly because links are an essential part of Search Engine Optimisation for a website and having the links in the right place and going to the right page is obviously part of this practice.
Some things of course don’t change. There is still a need for good content for example, which should always be considered for your website, but the linking strategies that have been used with considerable success for a number of years will need to be amended to reflect Google’s new approach to them.
It’s important to note that had Google said that links were not going to be used anymore as part of their ranking process, then many, many websites would have sunk without a trace, so it’s perhaps good news that this isn’t the case but it remains to be seen whether the linking situation will be a temporary thing or a permanent fixture.
A recent poll did look at where links are on a web page and whether the same keywords are being used in anchor text in an effort to gain insight but it is inconclusive at this point and only time will really tell us what the outcome of the new linking evaluation will be.
From our perspective, we feel that with lots of evaluation we’ll combat the issue with links, along with a number of the other changes, so patience is absolutely the key at the moment.
In the previous update we didn’t have a single client drop in rankings so we’re confident that we’ll be able to deal with Panda 3.3, despite there being no quick fix as it were and it will most likely take several weeks to find the answer.
So, if you’re wondering where the Google change to links will affect you, best advice is to be patient and ensure that you are working with a reputable SEO specialist that knows what they’re doing and who will have the answer you need to keep you ranked well on the major search engines.
Paul
