It is human nature to transgress and man is bent toward defiance. It is this defiance that gave rise to the perpetual cat and mouse game between Google and SEOs, black and white hat SEO professionals alike.
So how does one avoid the panic and worry of yet another Google algorithm update? Well, I’ve put together 5 top ways I believe this can be accomplished.
1. High quality content
By high quality content I mean several things. Correct all improper grammar and spelling. Ensure that your article reads well and is not using duplicate or spun content. Spammers love spinning content and playing this game will get you burned. Blogs, or videos should be engaging to users, since that is your intended audience.
Be original and offer something of value to your visitors. One well written and researched article that solves a problem or fills a need is worth more to your site than 10 poorly written articles you rushed to get together chasing keywords.
When you create value to your readers, they share, link and come back. Don’t worry if you’re not the worlds most articulate writer. There are many thousands of capable writers available and you can outsource the job for far less than you think.
2. Resist bad link practices – link spamming
Link building has become one of the most abused methods out there. There are those who engage in link buying for SEO benefit, which is a breach of Googles TOS. Avoid buying link packages and resist the urge to build a ton of exact match keyword rich links. This practice raises red flags and is likely to hurt more than help.
3. Perform frequent link audits and web site audits
This is what every webmaster should be doing, and if you haven’t yet done so, then start now. A web site audit gives you a clear picture of your web sites health and should be done on a regular basis. About once every month is a good start.
A link audit should be performed carefully to examine what kinds of inbound links you have and from where they are coming. A high concentration of keyword rich, exact match keywords appear unnatural and that is a major metric that Penguin is designed to monitor and penalize.
An in-bound link is a form of association, so you want to be sure that who you associate with is not engaging in any unethical practices or linking to low quality sites. If there are too many of them and cannot remove or modify the link, use the Google disavow tool. Doing an in-depth site audit takes time to do right.
4. Utilize high quality link building methods
If you consider the vastness of the internet, there are many legitimate ways to build links back to your site that can improve your page rank and your site’s overall standing in the SERPS. Link building is by no means dead, it’s just evolved. Forget gathering links from irrelevant unrelated sites, and monitor them for funky activity. Don’t chase dofollow links only. You must have a healthy and natural linking profile that is made up of a variety of links. If your content is authentic and engaging, then that will happen naturally.
5. Embrace social media
Many SEOs overlooked the importance of social media as a viable way to improve your page rank and position in Google’s SERPS. However, this now seems to be a greater part of the metric than ever before. You must create buzz around your videos, articles and tutorials, etc. Regardless of whether many social media sites add the nofollow attribute to their anchor tags, this is still a very powerful and effective way of generating traffic to your site. Traffic is an indicator of quality.
If you have thousands of backlinks to a page on your site, but it gets minimal visits, then something is amiss and this could be an indicator of trying to manipulate the search engines.
There is so much more that could be said to explore each point in greater detail, but you now have a good starting point, which if you follow will help you have less restless nights when the next major Google updates happen.