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Take
a ride along the search engine update trail with Bruce Zang as
he analyzes the reasons behind the updates in the major search
engines. Also, learn how SEO's live from one update
to the next like quarters in a football game or rounds in a boxing
match. Some win with each update, some lose, but most who do pick
themselve up and get ready for the next round. Some call it a
game, others a business. You decide.
Search Engine
Updates vs. SEO
Webmasters always anxiously wait for a search engine update. Those
who rank well want to see their sites get even better. Those who
didn't do well expect a major boost. Those whose sites get de-indexed
anticipate a major comeback. Those who just started new sites
bet on their sites will make into the first page of search engine
result pages (SERPs) for their targeting keywords. Of course,
not everyone will be happy about the results of search engine
updates. After all, search engine traffic is a zero-sum game -
someone loses and someone gains. Then, the webmasters start preparing
for next update.
The Business
Reasons Behind The Major Updates
All major
search engines claim that they strive to present search results
to users with the highest quality. But the business of search
engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many
business reasons for every major search engine updates. Search
engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion
rate since the searchers are very close to make their buying decisions.
The downside of the search traffic for webmasters is that they
don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today,
but nowhere next day.
Search engine
companies will, no doubt, use the search engine traffic to maximize
the values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update (allegra
update or Superbowl update) once again shocked the webmaster community
like last Florida update. The noticeable change in Superbowl update
is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords
that aren't even highly relevant to their pages. You may think
the move is to fight spams and improve the quality of SERPs. That's
only part of the story. The results of the update is that the
websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press
releases) will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does
this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations.
If we think
search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try
it free before you buy. This time, Google decides to lure the
major corporations to test the benefits of search traffic. Major
corporations will likely increase their spending in online advertising
and those news agencies may even drop their law suits against
Google if they see the traffic from Google justifies that their
sites benefit from including in Google index database.
Is this the
real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you
own Google, however, you will do the exactly the same. Will this
negatively impact the user experience? - maybe and maybe not.
What is the real difference between the #1 spot and the site that
ranks #100? - the backlinks. Backlinks don't alter the quality
of a page at all.
When they
say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are
always driven by business needs. It has nothing to do with "good"
or "bad".
Strategies
to Cope with search Engine Updates
The Internet
and the Web was once hailed as the new medium and the new opportunity
for small business and site owners. They will be disappointed
as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep pockets. There're
strategies they can use to cope with the search engine updates,
however.
1. Create
a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some
of your sites get hammered in a update the rest may benefit from
the update. 2. Generate traffic from all major search engines.
3. Use the search traffic to build loyal user bases. 4. Build
sites similar to the sites of well-established companies. The
tags, on-page, off page optimization techniques will become less
and less important as major corporations aren't interested in
those types of things that geek webmasters are interested.
About the
Author
Bruce Zhang
operates a website http://www.4th-media.com
that automatically aggregates and categorizes SEO news, new articles,
and forum threads from over 50 sources daily ( http://www.4th-media.com/newsbot/
) to help
webmasters and SEO professionals to keep up with the latest development
in search engine marketing. The website also offers original thoughts
on SEO.
SEO Expert
is a leading search engine optimization firm devoted to achieving
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