2012 has been a tough year for Search Engine Optimization as there have been some impactful changes made by Google in their search ranking algorithms in the likes of Panda and Penguin. With these changes, there has been thousands of websites that dropped ranking and even striped off from the search engine results pages of Google because of some violations which they call as over-optimization.
The panda and penguin updates were algorithm changes that include some functions that filter out unnatural links, duplicate contents and keyword stuffing. Generally, unnatural links are artificial links intended to manipulate SERP ranking – this includes buying links from link farms, scraped links and spam links that are attached to your website. Many people loved to get reciprocal links from link exchanges and link farms because it has, in some ways, have improved their search engine ranking. When the penguin update was finally rolled out, a lot of those sites were axed out from the search results.
If you are yet to start your SEO strategy for your own business, you better take note of these important tips:
1. Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is using excessive amount of keywords on your webpage content – on titles, descriptions and content body. You should not put so many links on your webpage which contains repetitive or similar keywords. Make sure you have a specific title and a detailed description on your Meta data.
2. Get only quality Back links
Do not acquire links from link farms of exchange links form other websites. Make sure you acquire good quality links from reputable websites. When using article directories to get back links, make sure you choose only those with high authority and high page rank article directories. If you decide to make a guest post, make sure to choose only those sites that are search engine friendly.
3. Watch out for Duplicate Content
Having duplicate content is the one that will deal a huge blow to your website. So make sure you check all your website content and all your other content from external sites for duplicates. Make use of duplicate content checker tools before you even publish a blog post or an article.
4. Last but not the least is not to stop on creating high quality content and sharing them on social networks. Content will always be king and the social media will always be there to consume quality content.