The hype that the highly influential and dynamic digital market has earned over the past few years cannot be denied. It’s been a competitive arena for digital businesses, which has discerned how much having a phenomenal understanding of search engine updates is important to cope with SEO updates. Eventually, every online business owner dream of appearing on top of the search engine result pages but how always remains dubious. It’s a search engine like Google that provides them with the roadmap to success via various algorithmic tests. Google algorithms and SEO updates are directly proportional, which means a mere change in the algorithms forces the SEO industry to adapt to the changes. Hence, to achieve a successful SEO campaign, experts are suggested to focus on these five most important Google updates of all time.
Acquainted in 2011, the algorithm hit the websites based on their content quality. The algorithm undergoes regular updates to catch up with the latest trends and dynamism. It ensured that scraped, thin, low quality, irrelevant, and duplicate content don’t enter the SERPs’ top results. Moreover, some other updates state that even multiple pages with the same keyword, auto-generated content, pages with one or two paragraphs, and too many outbound links with keywords are unacceptable and result in a penalty. In case your website is hit by this algorithm, you can recover your rank by simply overhauling the quality of your content and putting up things that deserve approval.
Hitherto, many websites used black-hat SEO techniques like buying links through wrong practices to artificially elevate their ranking in the search results. But once Google propelled Penguin update in 2012, all these websites that were spamming the search results were penalized for using manipulative techniques. The algorithm evaluates the websites in terms of their link profiles. Content containing dubious and shady links through some unreputable and unrelatable websites was considered unauthorized, therefore, it was penalized. However, this must not be mistaken as Google’s manual actions for unnatural linking.
Google introduced the Hummingbird algorithm in 2013 and unlike Panda and Penguin, it focused on improved user experience and doesn’t affect website ranking directly. The name Hummingbird suggests precise and fast, which if interpreted would confer the evaluation of websites based on fast and reliable accessibility of the information that searchers are looking for. It is made up of over 200 factors, out of which, long-tail keywords and mobile marketing are two commonly focused on elements that help Google ascertain if the meaning of keyword matches that of the entire content and if mobile marketing is one of the website’s strategies.
Google propelled the Pigeon update in 2014 to accentuate the quality of local results. The update was introduced to rank more significant, reliable, valuable, and exact local SEO results higher on the Search Engine Result Pages. It worked on the phrase “the closer, the higher” and shrank from 7-pack to 3-pack, making it extremely daunting for the marketers to compete for just three precious positions. To avoid being penalized for violating Pigeon guidelines, all you need to do is create world-class content and use keywords that include your native location.
Launched in 2017, Google Fred is a combination of several updates being updated daily. Its prior job is to identify affiliate-heavy and Ad-centered content and penalize them. Websites with common factors like aggressive advertising, thin and low-value content, and poor user experience, witnessed a sudden and drastic drop in the traffic volume after the advent of this algorithm. But with every penalty, there comes a recovery solution, which in this case, demands you to comply with the guidelines and create competition-worthy content.
Updates in Google algorithms can degrade the ranking of websites. Hence, SEO experts are advised to keep themselves up-to-date about the latest trends and changes and prevent their clients’ websites from penalties.
