As SEOs, we all feel obliged to follow Google updates, see what other SEOs think about them, and look for what works and what not…
What if I tell you, you should stop doing that?
Many people think of the next Google Update as the Apocalypse, End of times, end of the world, etc... In their eyes, Google is the ultimate enemy that is trying to bring your website down with the new algorithm change. What “webmasters” tend to forget is that Google has the main purpose of showing the most relevant search results by certain search queries in the top positions and not bring your website down…
Isn’t this precisely why we should follow those updates?
Yes and no.
It all started with the 90s tactics to bring a website to the top. Include a picture or a video, get your website listed on a few directories, use invisible text to stuff keywords that don’t naturally fir your content, overuse the META-tag description, etc…
When Google started announcing algorithm updates in 2002 everything changed. The updates were mostly about backlinks and the way your webpage is being indexed. Then at the end of 2003, The Florida Update hit really hard. All the 90s tactics like keyword stuffing brought the game on a different level.
Then people started finding loopholes in the algorithms, loopholes that work, loopholes that bring ranking success. But not for long…
SEO started getting more popular as a service. Many “how-to” blogs and DIY articles were published, some of them worked and some not. This is when people started announcing themselves “experts”. Those so-called experts knew a thing or two that temporarily works and then they do everything to trick the next Google Update, which (surprisingly) destroyed their websites’ visibility.
Basically, it’s like playing Jenga. You start with confidence but as the structure gets more unstable over time, you expect a collapse after removing every block. The worse thing about it? You know for sure that it will collapse at some point.
Now, I’m not saying that you should stop maintaining your website. It’s just that if you were following all the blackhat tips and tricks, there is no doubt that at some point you will be affected by some future update.
Instead, you should focus on quality content and strategic marketing. Period. This is everything we know for sure from Google and they kept telling us to do so. Yes, it takes time, yes you have a friend of a friend who did the blackhat thing and didn’t get affected, but trust me, there’s time for everything.
How do I know?
We tried building a brand. No blackhat tactics, no advertisement, no nothing….Just quality content and strategy. It’s still work in progress and the competition is big but we are slowly getting there.
In other words, as long as you know the basics of how to rank a website and you play by the book (don’t take the shortcut), no update should worry you. Yes, do follow the news just to be informed, but that’s all you need to do.