Google Algorithm Updates Affect Your Business
Google’s updates to their algorithm, will increasingly affect your business over the coming years. in 2024 we’ve been through major turbulence, with Google’s recent update dubbed HCU which is a core update that promotes helpful content. Changes to the way Google displays results can make or break businesses depending on what you’re doing with your SEO strategy (or particularly if you don’t have an SEO strategy at all).
What is the Google Algorithm?
With millions upon millions of webpages out there, you don’t want to wade through every single one to find the answer to a simple question. So, Google has created algorithms to give some pages preference in the results depending on what you search. This is so that you get your answer as quickly as possible by being shown the most relevant results.
Google uses many algorithms to determine which results show up first for a search. Many factors come into play with these, including keywords, the usability of the site, the credibility of the site, and your location.
How Does the Google Algorithm Affect A Business?
Let’s get to the point – how all of this affects you and your business. When customers are searching for products, services, or information that your website can provide, you want your website to be one of the first ones they see. However, it’s not always as easy as just having great content or relevant products.
Without putting some work into it, your site will likely not be on the first page of search results because unless you’re in a niche industry, you will have many competitors. Many people use SEO strategies to boost their search engine ranking. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it is the art of letting the Google algorithm know who your website is relevant to.
Techniques include adding keywords to your site, making it easier to use, adding backlinks to reputable sites, and so much more! For example, if you are a sports supplement company, people may search ‘best protein powder Australia’. If you have this key phrase on your site, it may be more likely to come up when someone searches this.
You can see that if you have targeted your site to suit the current Google algorithm, there can be major changes needed when that algorithm changes. As Google changes priorities, you must adjust your website to match.
Previous Google Algorithm Updates
So, what are the updates happening at the moment to Google’s algorithms that will affect your business?
2020 Updates
In 2020, the focus seems to be on cutting fake news out of the web. This includes fact-checking news stories and articles as well as limiting auto-complete options. So that this update does not affect your business, you will need to ensure that you can back up everything you claim on your site. Add plenty of solid references to make sure that what you say is correct.
BERT
Bert was an update that happened back in 2019 and is one of the biggest updates in recent years. This update focused on parsing user queries to determine the intent of the person searching. Before this update, Google would generally fire back results that exactly matched the searcher’s query. Now, Google is more intuitive and understands more about how what you’re looking for might correlate to a site even if the text is not exactly the same. For businesses already using SEO practices, this was a useful update. It allows for more natural use of keywords in the text of your site, as you don’t need to have an exact match with the search query for your site to show up.
Panda
Panda was an update that occurred in stages between 2011 – 2015 that focused on website content. The intention, it seemed, was to get rid of the days of article spinning and writing low-quality content just to fill space. Panda was a much-needed way of stopping sites that did this from ranking well on search engine results. One of the main changes for businesses after the Panda update was that you can no longer get away with copy and pasting content from other websites. So, you need to write original content to improve your search engine ranking.
Penguin
The Penguin algorithm update focused on weeding out sites that were using aggressive backlink building strategies. Linking to other sites is a great SEO practice, however, some were taking it too far and adding countless useless links just to get noticed. Google decided that these sites were not worth featuring in search results, and thus Penguin was designed to combat these tactics. So, add relevant, high-quality links into your site content where it feels natural, but don’t overdo it.
Get Help with Your SEO
If you’re not sure how SEO works and how to use it to improve your site’s ranking, Thinkroom is here to help. We have talented SEO specialists on our team who are ready to help you leverage the Google algorithms to help you rise to the top of search rankings.
Or maybe you know how it all works, but simply don’t have the time to do it yourself. Focus on what you do best and bring us in to do what we’re the experts in – SEO and marketing for your site. Contact us today to find out more about Thinkroom can help your business get noticed.
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