Recent Change on Google Algorithm-The Phantom

Recently Google put out a change to their ranking system.  Many people were calling it “mobilegeddon” because it forced all websites to be mobile friendly.  Do you think Google would stop there?  Well you are right.  Google has done it again.  Not really that bad but it implemented a change to its algorithm so that it gave lower rankings to “how to“pages with little content.

So what does that mean for you?

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Well maybe not much as long as you put quality content on your website.  If you have low quality content on your site that focus only how to pages then the rankings may be affected.  This change was done very quietly.  Many are calling it a Phantom change because Google has not commented on it.  You can read more about it here at NBC News.

 

What this means for many Bloggers

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Many bloggers have thrived on how to content.  It is the lifeblood of many online businesses.  It is the root of many keywords and searches that everyone does every day on Google.  Think about it for a minute.  You might have found this post or others like it by Googling “How to rank well on Google”.  From what I have ascertained is that those websites that have poor content but target the “How to” keywords will now get lower ranking.

Think of this as noted in the NBC news article some businesses that have been around for 10 years suddenly had a 22% drop in traffic overnight from Google.  Can you say ouch? Twenty two percent almost one quarter of their established traffic gone, vaporized in one night. That could crush any well-established business, let alone a small blog that relies on that traffic to survive.

If You’re Just Starting Out

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This will have very little impact on you since you are building a site within the new rules of Google.  Just keep in mind the old rules of keyword research are thrown out the door when it comes how to pages.  This does not mean that you now cannot do a how to page it just means you need to make sure that the information you provide is relevant, engaging, and substantive.  You should be doing this anyway if you are writing a blog. You can see my post on engaging readers.

 

If You Already have an Established Site

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Having a site that is now seen a decrease in Google rankings is not the end of the world.  You have a wealth of information already there.  Go back to it rewrite some of the articles.  Focus on the content and delivering it to your readers in another way.  Don’t make your key words focus only on how to do something.  It will kill your overall rankings.  Google actually likes it when you go back and make changes to your previous posts so this could give you a little edge on the competition.

 

Big Brother Google

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Before I had a blog I used to hear bloggers complain about Google and my thought was, you need to play by their rules.  Now that I have a blog I see what they mean.  Playing by their rules is fine, no problem at all, but they keep changing the rules.  Sometimes they give press releases about the rule changes such as last month’s mobile friendly change.  Other times you are not notified and see a change in your ranking, as many did with this phantom change.

The reality is though we need to play nice and accept Google’s rules and their changes.  Adjusting our/your SEO strategy based on the latest changes they made.  They are the biggest provider in search engines and until that changes, their changes cannot be ignored.  I don’t see that happening anytime soon, so I wanted to give my readers a heads up on the latest change.

Please let me know your experiences or ask questions below.  Thank you!