Keeping up with Google algorithms
by Ethan Giles, Senior Operations Manager at novi.digital
Google updates its algorithm thousands of times a year – changes that vary in importance, size, and effect. It can often be daunting for marketing professionals to keep up with all the changes. Many of these updates aren’t even reported by Google, but are discovered and shared by SEO experts. Knowing what these updates mean and how to track them is something you might want to know.
Why shouldn’t I track Google algorithm updates?
Given that Google updates the algorithm that many times a year, it means it’s being updated multiple times each day. It’d be next to impossible to keep track of all these, and by the time you have identified what this update is doing, there’s 10 more to try to work out. You would drive yourself crazy!
The best way to keep up with the algorithm changes is to focus on achieving what the algorithms are attempting to measure. All Google is trying to achieve when it makes changes to the algorithms is to ensure that the websites it serves up match what the user’s searching for.
If you can focus on providing relevant information related to what users are searching for, you’ll always be ahead of any algorithm updates.
How can I give users what they’re searching for?
Firstly, you need to do your research and identify exactly what users are searching. We provided some insight in how to do this in our recent article on selecting keywords.
Once you’ve selected your key search terms, you need to ensure you have a page that focuses on each. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to have a page that’s geared towards multiple keywords. You should ideally have one keyword per page.
Some pages might not have appropriate keywords – in this case, these are not search-driven pages and do not need to have the same priority given to them. You may find that keywords without appropriate pages exist, so these pages should be created.
Once you’ve mapped your keywords to pages, begin optimisation. You need to ensure the keyword appears in the page title, meta description, H1, as well as throughout the content.
This’ll ensure that both the search engine and the user can recognise that the page is going to provide them with the information they’ve been looking for.
When are Google algorithms important?
There are times when it might be beneficial to be aware of algorithm updates. You should seek out further information and help if you notice your SEO performance drops significantly without other obvious causes.
It could be that your site has fallen afoul of a recent update, and optimisations that were previously working have become ineffective and your site is suffering. Take this advice and other appropriate user-driven SEO actions, and this should never happen.
Ethan will be hosting the SEO 101 training session in Manchester on September 25th. Register to tackle these issues in greater depth, and come away with a strategy for fulfilling your SEO needs.