Your SEO Strategy VS Search Engine Algorithms

In the digital world, it never good to stay complacent. Especially when search engines are switching up their algorithms every now and then. One of the popular search engines, Google, for example, releases algorithm updates that can make or break your search engine optimization strategies in an instant if you don’t keep up. 

In one incident involving Google’s Penguin, one of its algorithm updates, managed to sink the organic clicks of StairSupplies. In that situation, there was a huge drop from a thousand organic clicks to merely just a hundred or two according to marketing manager Caleb Morris. That’s what happens when there’s no Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the only clicks you’re getting are from paid advertisements. So in a sense, it really is your SEO strategy versus the updating algorithms. And your aim is not only to successfully survive but to thrive.

SEO Strategy: The Game Of Algorithms

Google is known for the ever changing algorithms powerful enough to strike down SEO successful sites like StairSupplies. Battling these changes aren’t going to be easy, as this is what search engine optimization experts struggle with too. Algorithm changes are lethal to websites that rely on SEO as it thwarts their ranking on the search engine itself. You may be on the top of the list before the algorithm update but afterwards, there could be a drastic drop in rank.

SEO matters a lot in getting online traffic, so the best way is to find a way to decipher the algorithms and manipulate it to your advantage. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t make it that easy. Why? Because Google even uses algorithms to change their algorithms according to Keylime Toolbox head Vanessa Fox. It’s as complicated as it sounds. That means reverse engineering Google’s actions may just as well be wasted efforts.

Adding the fact that Google is more prioritized than other search engines, it really makes beating the algorithm game such a big deal. Plus, sure traffic if you have a high rank there.

SEO Users Trump Card

Although algorithms are too complicated to beat through dissection, there’s still hope through Google’s two major concentrations. The first is that Google matches the website’s content to the query of search engine users. This still means that you have to really match it with the audience you’re aiming for. The second concentration is incoming links. These links do wonders as it gives your page or website a sense of “authority” with the action of linking or backlinking.

White Hat vs. Black Hats

The linking set up is divided into two, the white hats and the black hats. White hats drive in the effort to give their website amazing content that others find it worthy to be linked to. While for black hats, they give no attention to content but instead aim to use the algorithm to their advantage to get traffic. Because of black hats, Google put out Penguin to stop these link farms.

The Case Of StairSupplies

In the case of StairSupplies, they were in partnership with an overseas firm for their Search Engine Optimization. Having not questioned their incredibly boosted traffic, they did not notice that a large sum of that was because of black hat. This is why StairSupplies received such a penalty from the Penguin algorithm.

Two Kinds Of Google Penalties:

• Manual Penalties – These penalties are pressed against sites by a Google employee. Punishments include reducing search rankings until the extremes of getting completely deleted from the Google database.
• Algorithm Penalties – Algorithm Penalties happen when page rankings become negative because Google declares a site’s SEO in violation. This doesn’t come with any warning so the site has to notice and fix it on their own.

StairSupplies transferred from one SEO firm to another trying to resolve their traffic drop and removing the links from the previous black hat methods. Now they’re back on their feet using better content.

Despite Google’s efforts, black hat can’t be completely eradicated. The black hat ways have even improved, now even involving Malware techniques. Whereas for the Google-liked white hats, aside from content, legitimate links are also needed for the site to rank high and competitively. It’s labor intensive and requires negotiations, but at least it’s effective.

Mobile Device Era

There’s another significant change, and that’s the emergence of the mobile era. Everyone is on their mobiles now, so Search Engine Optimization has to adapt to that too. A majority of searches are now voice searches and this may as well be the incoming future of the web.

Even now, there’s the competition to get into Google’s snippet box, a sort of like summary box of mixed media of what the user is looking for. So websites, along with SEO, have to be flexible enough to survive these changes and even more changes in the future.