Google updates its search algorithm almost every day, sometimes even two or three times a day. Most of those updates are minor and don’t trigger any noticeable changes to your search ranking. But some updates are more serious and may influence your ranking in a big way. Your SEO consultant should help you stay on top of the algorithm changes, but here are some tips every website owner should follow.
1. Keep updated
As a business owner or website owner, you may not have the time to keep up with every single update. But make sure you don’t miss the important ones. Whenever Google releases an update, hundreds of bloggers start posting articles on the topic. Unfortunately, most of those articles are full of red herrings. The last thing you want is to get wrong or misleading information about an update. That’s exactly why you should get the information from a reliable source like Google’s Official Webmaster Blog. Another good idea would be to follow an SEO expert on Facebook or Twitter. That way, you can track important algorithm updates in a jiffy, without having waste your valuable time on online research.
2. Check if your website is penalized
There are a number of ways to identify a penalty, but you should first use the Google Webmaster tools. If you get a manual penalty, you should receive a message on your Webmaster account under “Search Traffic” > “Manual Actions”.
But sometimes the penalty could be a result of automatic algorithm changes by Google as opposed to a manual action. In such cases, you should check for any drop in your website traffic, using Google Analytics. Make sure you check your organic traffic, not your general traffic that also includes traffic from PPC and social media.
3. Seek professional help
If you notice any significant drop in your traffic, you should hire an experienced SEO expert or an acclaimed digital marketing agency that has years of experience fixing Google penalties.
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