SEO changes in 2014 ?

However these animals can be tamed though, understood and made to work for YOU.   In 2013 Google made some major updates – so what are these Google updates  – how do they affect your  website and what you can do to control them – read more to find out how.

Panda

Also known as ‘Farmer’ targets websites with low-quality content and displays them lower in search results.  You may think your website does not have duplicate content – however Google may have other ideas.

You need to Focus on producing your own, high-quality unique and fresh content.

Make sure all of your pages have unique titles and meta descriptions and change them if they are the same use robots.txt file to hide from Google’s eyes any types of duplicate pages  – for example  www and non-www page variants, paginated pages. ECommerce websites can have real problems with this.

Keep content relevant and useful

This may sound obvious but you need to make . So  how much content is enough?

The easiest and simplest way to see that is by analysing your niche competition with Website Auditor.

Check how long each of your webpages are with WebSite Auditor. You will also be able to see the length of the average competitor’s page to learn whether your content is substantial enough – when compared that of your rivals.

Penguin

Also known as Web spam penalty’ targets any web spam, that is – websites that are not following Google guidelines and are manipulating Google rankings.

One of the issues that Penguin will target is regarding your website’s content, in particular – keyword stuffing.

• Do NOT simply put a list of keywords in the page title (instead of making it descriptive or using your brand name.)
• Do NOT jam keywords into the Meta Description instead of making it a call-to-action.
• Avoid over optimising H1 titles. Instead fit keywords into these tags if it makes sense, but don’t waste time trying to get them into every single page or especially every single subtitle.
• Do NOT put stand alone keywords in the alt tags of images. Use a descriptive alt tag or none at all.

HummingBird 

Also known as “Semantic search update” – Google wanted to make sure they respond not simply to keywords in a query, but to users’ actual search intent behind these keywords.  Google wanted to identify the way users search for content – some do it by asking questions “How much is Powersuite” others will search on “Powersuite price” whilst others will search on “Pwersuite buy online”.

If you know what your potential customers are asking Google – you can create a page that answers those direct questions – thus capturing more customer queries.

Using Rank Tracker and its keyword research module, you easily get new keyword ideas using the 18 powerful keyword research methods (including Google suggest as well), without any need to switch to other tools and sources.