According to SEO.com, Google recently announced its newest algorithm update. Matt Cuts, head of Google’s web spam team, made an announcement at SXSW during the Q&A portion of his session that Google has been working on a new algorithm that will reward websites with great content and websites rather than those that are using too many keywords or exchanging too many links. Google is working to make GoogleBot smarter and improve relevance so websites that are trying to “over optimize” won’t rule over truly great content.
Google has been stating for a long time that it prefers and wants to give higher rankings to content-rich websites. The new algorithm update, which is being referred to as “the over-optimization penalty” reflects Google’s long-term goal. So what does this mean for business owners? It means they should figure out exactly what constitutes useful and relevant content for their target audience and deliver it on their website. Producing great content that engages your target audience will help your business get on the first page of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and compete with big companies that have bigger budgets for their SEO efforts. One tip from SEO.com is to vary your content types; use video, photos, text, bulleted lists, headers to break up your paragraphs and more in order to add interest to your content. The more interesting and helpful your content, the more people will want to share, increasing your relevance and page rank.