A few of our clients have asked us about SearchEngineJournal's recent "Google made 3,200 changes to search in the past year" article that was published in July.
We've received a ton of questions about this, including:
- What does that mean for me and my site?
- Is search engine optimization really still important?
- Will this negatively impact my traffic and SERPs?
- How do we best respond to so many changes?
- I'm not a webmaster...what should I even DO?
- How do we even keep up with that many changes?
First, take a deep breath. Don't automatically assume that every single change Google makes to its algorithm is going to negatively affect your site. While this sounds like a big number, it's important to realize that most of these are minor updates that only affect a small subset of the market.
Second, remember that Google's changes are largely related to providing strong content. Don't try to check off every SEO task or meet all of the guidelines Google has in place. It will NEVER happen. Instead, focus on providing useful, relevant and engaging content that helps your prospects and customers solve a problem while tackling the "big" SEO issues. Your rankings will naturally follow.
Third, keep in mind that you WILL see fluctuations in your rankings and traffic as a result of Google changes -- sometimes big fluctuations and sometimes smaller ones. The most important thing that you can do is have someone paying attention to these changes and evaluating how they might impact you on an ongoing basis. If you're not monitoring this or paying someone else to do it for you, you're going to notice the impact eventually. It might be a few weeks down the road or it might be a year later as you're trying to clean up the mess (i.e. resulting fallout and impact on your business...steep, continual drops in traffic, fewer high-quality leads or a significant hit to your revenue).
So don't panic...just make sure you're paying attention! Don't have the time to do that on your own? Contact us to learn how we can help, get a free SEO audit now or check out our handy "5 quick ways to improve your SEO and rankings" infographic.
Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock Photos | antianti