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You might have heard that Google Penguin is introduced and it affected some website’s ranking in the search engine. Well, it happened when Google Panda was released. People may or may not know what it is and how it affect to their website and so on. So here we try to put the stuff into simple words for understanding purpose (of course we try to keep essence of the original stuff, but may not be able to do it fully, so consider it as guideline only).
Everyone in the business needs to get updated with the business policies, and Google is not an exception. SEO is a really great area where some people are working exceptionally well around the globe, and makes their site Search Engine Friendly, to get the maximum advantage of the same in order to get he maximum exposure. There is nothing wrong in that. In fact, Google and all other search engine pushes webmaster doing so.
What went wrong then, or why the changes are needed then?
Do remember that as just mentioned earlier, SEO is about making the website Search Engine Friendly. This phrase means a lot. You should not trick into fool the search engine, as usually a friend is not expected to do so right? Google clearly states (and other Search Engines too) that content is the king. Focus on the quality of the content and rest will be followed. There is no need to play with the search engine and its algorithm any dirty tricks.
Simple Understanding
A search engine bot visits the websites around the world and checks the content of the same, classifies the same with the powerful algorithm and stores it into its own database. This is a continuous process which keeps running forever.
How a search engine bot (or webbot) know what the page is all about and to which category it belong?
The head area of the webpage plays important part. The webpage URL, the keywords, description and other META attributes set in the HEAD area along with the page title, helps it finding the most relevant category for the page. However it was found that Meta keywords and Meta description was played with by some webmasters/SEO companies to stuff wrong information (like popular celebrity names etc) in order to gain traffic, so it is given less importance (and sometimes even avoided) by the search engines. Now search engines focus on the web page name and title most, the good reason is here you have a very little chance to stuff anything wrong into because your webpage have a single name and title. Same way H1 to H6 tags in the page content are also considered on the moderated bases.
By knowing that the content is the king; people used to place some keywords and phrases in the page, earlier in the hidden variables, then in the transparent formatting and later visible to use in the page footer. Do remember, playing smart is neither a crime, nor it is wrong, but the guys working on this smart search engine are far intelligent and the contentious updations to the search engine bot and it’s logic to classify the content will somehow trap the thing sooner or later and then the site will be penalized in the search results. By the way, this continuous updations to the algorithms are given project names having certain specifications and Google Panda, Google Penguin are such projects.
Google revealed that (and no one can know more what they have revealed, there are people on the Internet claiming that Google Page Ranking formula revealed- Get your site listed on top 10 etc… Don’t get into that trap. Do you think that Coca Cola will reveal their formula? Why on the Earth then Google will?), Page rank of a webpage is decided based on the various factors (Do remember the Page rank is named after Larry Page, the one who have defined the formula to decide the rank or weightage of a page in the ocean of information):
The content of the page.
As said earlier “the content is the king”, Google checks the page content. It also checks that how may links are there in the page against the content. Some people in try to prepare a web of page, places a lot of internal links, there is no need. Have a neat and user friendly top menu, side bar, page footer and a sitemap page and all you are done. Make sure to not to stuff keyword into the content explicitly. If they come by the flow, no worries, but having the same phrase a 100 times in the page without relevancy, will take you to nowhere. Then the importance of the information is checked. Current issues, hot topics, overall important searches and a lot more is considered against your webpge content to decide its importance.
The URL and the Title of the page.
We don’t want to repeat the stuff mentioned earlier, but make sure that, you have the most relavent page title and URL. Take advantage of features like “URL Rewriting” in order to prepare search engine friendly URL. We may discuss it sometime later, in detail.
The importance of page.
If the content you specified is important other will definitely refer you. This is how the world moves on. Search engine follows that logic as well. This is something where people started playing. By knowing that as many incoming links (from other websites to yours) are there, the page was considered more important, people started buying and selling links. They pay some sites to link back to theirs by paying. Other way is reciprocal links, based on the philosophy of “you link me, I will link you”. All this is useless unless the content is important. Don’t ever think that the search engine knows that which websites are playing such games. If they don’t they will soon. In addition to have links from other site, search engines do check the page rank of the site from where the link to your website is coming. For example, if a page on your website is linked from Wikipedia it will be considered more important (based on the page ranking of Wikipedia; if someone tries having some back-links wrongly on Wikipedia, the moderators will remove them over the period of time without missing, as we know). So do make sure to avoid having paid links in your pages, and avoid participating in such programs, you will waste money nothing else.
Sitemaps
Create user friendly sitemaps and submit them to search engines. They will love it. It will make their work easier. Again, don’t try to play with the page updation frequency and page weightage here. Search engine bots will anyway know when the page was actually updated, so specifying wrong frequency here will not help. Page weightage is against other pages of your website, so use it wisely and honestly to mark more important pages on your website. We might be writing an entire article on this stuff.
Too many ads
Well, everyone runs a site to earn something (if not money then fame, goodwill anything). So there is nothing wrong in having advertisements on your web pages anyway. But make sure, you have remarkable content to present. No one will come to your website to see advertisements!
In short, be honest, produce something important, spread the words about the work done in proper way, and we do not think that any update to any search engine logic will harm you. Search engines are not foes, they are friends. Do not fight with them, be friendly to them, and they will to you!
