Keeping up with Google: SEO experts talk

Google has done it again.

Just as businesses think they’ve got their eye on the SEO ball, the rules suddenly change again. Last year it was Google Instant and Places. This time, it’s Google Panda, +1 and predictive text that are causing headaches, and experts warn it’s more important than ever to keep up.

They also agree on one thing – original content creation is more important than ever.

“For a lot of websites, they have just copied and pasted content, and it isn’t engaging,” warns AussieWeb chief Monte Heubsch. “It’s now easier for Google to understand whether it’s original or inserted content.”

“This is going to hit a lot of companies hard. Now Google has a lot of metrics to determine if something is unique, and being shared.”

Google Panda

By far the biggest change for search this year was the introduction of Google Panda. This massive update saw Google crack down on so-called content farms, which duplicate mass-generated content purely for the page views.

At the time, Google specified that it was targeting mass content farms, and Demand Media was cited as one of the biggest targets, (the company subsequently lost a huge chunk of its Google traffic).

But this major change isn’t just directed at them.

Experts warn SMEs that because of the changes Google has made to its algorithm, it is now easier than ever to determine whether content on a business’s site is now original, or if it’s just taken from somewhere else. And if it’s taken – you can expect your rankings to be impacted.

Heubsch says if businesses were sourcing blog posts and updates from other websites, it will hurt their rankings.

“It depends on where businesses are sourcing their data. If they’re grabbing stuff from news feeds and reporting articles from other sites, Google determines the source of that as the authority, and then punishes anyone ponying off the back of it.”

Instead, Heubsch says Google emphasises original content much more than ever before. As long as businesses are producing their own articles and text, then they should be fine.

“I don’t know anybody who didn’t see a huge impact on traffic if they were using duplicate content. Google is cracking down, saying this isn’t a good user experience. Directories got hammered really hard.”

So what do SMEs need to do?

First of all, if your business is using duplicate content, then you need to stop immediately. This is hammering your rankings and stopping you from being seen by as many people as possible.

“There are plenty of sites that are just copying content, and it’s just not engaging,” says Switched On Media search head Alex Asigno.

Stewart Media chief executive Jim Stewart says the change only emphasises how much you need to become a thought leader in your business.

Whether they like it or not, he says, “businesses now have to become publishers”.

“It’s so important now to try and look for well-known bloggers or guest bloggers that have good authorship across the web to come and blog about something to do with your product.”

“You have to be out searching for this type of stuff, because that’s where all the action is.”

But there’s a third element to the Panda update that should make business owners think twice. It’s all about social.

Asigno says the Panda update not only emphasised the creation of unique content, but combines search rankings and social media in a big way. The more your links are getting thrown around different social networks, the higher your rankings will be.

“What made Panda so great was that it enables this larger scale of ranking,” he says.

“So on the one hand, they know what a good website is, and on the other, they know what a bad website is as well. They can tell whether you are considered to be authoritative or not.”

Asigno says businesses not only need to start making content that is engaging, but start pushing that content onto social networks.

“This is going to hit a lot of companies hard,” Heubsch says.

“Google has all these metrics about who uses the Facebook like button, who shares content and who tweets content, so they know what isn’t being shared and what is.”

One new, separate update Google just announced is that it will start identifying bloggers by name. It will show authors’ names next to article search results, and begin identifying who it believes are the most authoritative experts on particular topics.

This ties into Stewart’s comments about becoming a thought leader. If you start a blog on your website associated with your name, then you may find that if you keep updating with rich, regular content, it will only bolster your company’s search results.

Asigno says this will help quite a few companies, but it will hit others hard.

“If they didn’t have unique content, it will hurt them. Google has all this information on who’s sharing what, and if that content isn’t being shared because it’s not useful then it’s much less likely to rank.”

Google’s new social world

This approach is all part of Google’s new venture into social networking.

You may have noticed a new “+1” button appearing on different websites over the past few months. These are similar to the Facebook like button, and are part of this new social strategy.

“The +1 button is one of the main changes that affect actual results. This was to combat the Facebook “like” button and impact on search results,” Stewart says.

While Facebook attempted to make the entire web connected to its so own network, Google wants to ensure that content you “+1”, along with content given the “+1” treatment by your friends in the network, will appear higher in rankings.

Stewart says this is all well and good, but Google appears to be ramping up the amount of attention it wants to place on the +1 button.

“Just recently Google launched an update to its Webmaster Tools that give you metrics on the button, and what’s happening around it. It’s interesting for people if they are using it.”

What’s interesting, however, is the role +1 and socialisation will begin to play on your everyday rankings.

Google’s new social network layer may not only be a competitor for Facebook, but will start to change the way content is indexed on search results pages.

Asigno also says while it is too early to tell whether the Google+ network will have a listing effect on SEO, Google is most definitely using social as a way to determine which content should be ranked higher than others.

“Both Bing and Google have now combined social metrics with their rankings,” he says.

“They are not only looking at anchor text, quality of the links and so on. They are looking at more engaging metrics, like the balance rate, the click-through-rate, and whether people are sharing that content on networks.”

The other, much more important, aspect of this is that Google will start prioritising links that are shared within your network of contacts. For instance, if one of your Gmail contacts clicks on a link and spends a lot of time there, that site will be more likely to rank higher in one of your searches.

“Normally you’d never get to see that link because it hadn’t been shared. But if you or a friend are searching for something similar that site will pop up for, it may be higher than normal.”

The lesson here for businesses is that social is not only becoming a required tool for networking and customer support, but also for your SEO. SMEs need to start sharing as many good-quality links as possible through networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Asigno says this is all part of a trend the company is seeing in that search is moving away from traditional search pages.

“We’re seeing a huge amount of search now in places like Twitter, where people are asking for recommendations. Businesses need to be looking at that, and make sure they’re a part of that. People want recommendations, not relying on a machine to give them an answer.”

Expanding with Google Instant

Finally, businesses need to remember how the Google Instant update can affect their advertising.

This update, which was released late last year, not only updates search results as users type them but also provides a feature called predictive text. This essentially “completes” a search term for a user, based on what it thinks are the most likely words they will use.

Chris Thomas, Reseo chief executive, says it’s important to start searching for your own business, write down what type of predictive text you’re seeing, and then start using advertising campaigns based around those terms. He claims to have seen an improvement in his own personal business while doing this.

“I did some tests on it all, and found that it worked. We’re working with this on some bigger businesses as well, and small companies can do it too.”

The second major recommendation Thomas gives is keeping up-to-date with mobile. More companies are asking for briefs on mobile sites, and Thomas says more SMEs need to learn how to make their mobile sites SEO-savvy.

“Folks are asking for not only websites, but compatibility in mobile as well. That’s more at the big end of town, but we’re seeing a lot more plugins and things like that, that are being used on content management like WordPress to make them more mobile friendly.”

Making sure your sites are filled with content that will show up in mobile searches will make sure you aren’t missing out on any potential traffic.

“The other thing to remember is just to keep an eye on Google Places. You always need to monitor that and make sure your details are filled out.”