Google Rankings Algorithm Changes

[onefreekiwinz]

2011 has been a very busy year for Google. Much has changed and if you want to make sure that your website gets enough visitors, you have to keep up with the latest changes. This shows the most important Google changes that you should keep in mind.



1. Low quality websites are filtered

Google released several ranking algorithm updates in 2011 that tried to filter low quality websites from the search results.
Scraper websites or websites with low quality content don't get high rankings anymore. Due to these changes in Google's algorithm, some websites saw a traffic drop of 75% or more.
To do: don't try to promote your website with quick-fix solutions. Quality is more important than quantity.

2. Search has become social

Social signals such as the number of Google +1 clicks, Facebook mentions and tweets now influence the position of your website on Google's result pages.
To do: add social sharing buttons to your website and encourage your website visitors to mention your website on social networks.

3. Search results are more than just links

Most result pages on Google show much more than a list of 10 web pages. Search results now include images, videos, news, local results, etc.
To do: use a holistic approach to promote your website: optimize the content of your web pages, get good backlinks to your website, offer local services, submit videos about your business to Google to make sure that your website gets listed in all possible places on Google's result page.

4. Page speed has become a ranking signal

Searchers tend to be happier if they get what they want as quickly as possible. Although site speed is only a minor factor in Google's ranking algorithm, it makes sense to optimize the performance of your pages.
To do: make sure that your web pages load as quickly as possible.

5. It's not just Google: Yahoo/Bing is getting more important

Although Google has the biggest market share, Yahoo and Bing now have a combined market share of about 33%. If you're not getting 33% of your traffic from Yahoo/Bing than you should start to optimize some of your pages for Bing.
To do: if you want to get 33% more visitors, optimize some of your pages for Yahoo/Bing.

Much has changed in 2011. We continually update our website to keep up-to-date with the latest search engine algorithm changes.

[Ace1337]

From my experience, speed is more than just a minor factor.

I had a site that got suspended on a shared hosting because it got too big, so I switched to a dedicated and in two months my traffic doubled and I wasn't doing any backlinking at all.

[gomzydecor]

I own 2 caralluma fimbriata websites & have been constantly looking for improving the rankings. I have noticed few thongs which matches your above written Algorithms onefreekiwinz, thanks for enhancing my knowledge. And yea Page load is a big factor after panda update.

[Game Player]

This is really helpful thread but the thing is that I am in a fix that how page speed will be affected in increasing ranking.

[alyessamoore]

I am using joomla in my seo website..It takes time to open. How can i increase its loading speed...?

[Natlex]

A good list of recommendation.. I've been working on improving speed a lot. As for social media it's a bit hard with what I currently have but in the future hopefully it gets easier

[Cool Hand Luke]

Nice list, it's too bad you plagiarized it and this exact article has been indexed on Google hundreds of times before you stole it word-for-word. Way to up your post count!

[Trevor]

Nice post, buddy!

Many people say the old SEO is dead, but that's not true and never will be. Quality backlinks will always be a crucial SEO factor and quality content will always an edge over low-quality spun content.

I agree that Google seems to give more weight to sites that are interactive and enjoyable for the visitors. In the last couple of months I have achieved good rankings with pages - yes, pages - that contained a video or a few images describing to the visitors the problem in more detail. This usually also increases the amount of time my visitors spend on my sites.

One nifty trick you can use and which I use is, if you place a video on any your sites or pages, make it autoplay right after the page is viewed.

[John Moore]

Adding videos and images into your unique content definitely helps more now days, and 1000+ word quality articles are more favored. Basically G is getting better at identifying quality pages for their users.

[webworm]

Yeah they are correct.But the new hypothesis for the SEO marketer have been saying is that google plus will be more fruitful for the SEO purpose.

[Trevor]

Originally Posted by JawadAshraf

Can you tell about your nifty trick? I know how we can Autoplay the video on Youtube but how you Autoplay the video while it's in your blog post? I assumed you get the video code from Youtube and post it or do you hosted the video on your own server? I think in that way, it will Autoplay. is it?

I usually just put the embed code from Youtube to my site and put a little bit of code at the end of the URL.

For example, let's say the embed code looks like this:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sfg9scE7Cws" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then if you add "?hl=en&autoplay=1" (without quotes), the video will start playing right after you view the page.

So in this case the embed code would look something like this:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sfg9scE7Cws?hl=en&autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

- Trev

[Logicson]

Originally Posted by alyessamoore

I am using joomla in my seo website..It takes time to open. How can i increase its loading speed...?

I think you should check your hosting also sometimes your sites works very slow due to hosting issues...

[rooze]

Originally Posted by alyessamoore

I am using joomla in my seo website..It takes time to open. How can i increase its loading speed...?

If you have Cpanel hosting you can enable Gzip - sitewide compression.
Then in Joomla Admin > Global Config > System - enable cache.
Then in plugins, enable system cache.

Then in Tools, clean and purge cache.

Now you'll need to thoroughly check your site from the front-end to make sure it's working as it should, in particular, check the login and registration functions.

To go further, you can install plugins which will reduce the number of server calls and combine images (sprites) along with Java and CSS.

Just make sure you fully check your site each time you make a change, particularly if you have a lot of components and/or a shopping cart like VM.

[BigNorm]

Originally Posted by Cool Hand Luke

Nice list, it's too bad you plagiarized it and this exact article has been indexed on Google hundreds of times before you stole it word-for-word. Way to up your post count!

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

[Cool Hand Luke]

Originally Posted by BigNorm

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

Imitation might be, but this is not imitation, it's direct plagiarism to up his post count. Most would call that theft and spamming.