Google’s Latest Changes- What They Want, What They Don’t Want, and How to Keep Them Happy! (Hint: Relevancy is King)

"Relevancy plus common sense plus content"- we like those words at LTCEP and we  are VERY glad that Google likes them to.

It's funny how we've always had that practice with our clients' websites, and now it's paying off in more ways than we imagined. 

Recently Google implemented the "Penguin Update" and we were very pleased to see even some of our clients' youngest websites benefit from those changes in Google's algorithm. 

Now we have taken that path a step further and launched authority sites that are not only relevant, but highlight our clients' expertise in the subjects of caregiving and Alzheimer's disease care. We have 5 more authority sites launching this year alone. Who benefits? Thousands of overwhelmed, stressed out family caregivers, and people looking for elder care answers….and of course our clients will benefit too.

Want to see more? Visit www.LessCaregiverStress.com and www.AlzheimersCareToday.com

To back up the value of this practice- here's some information from the guy who knows all at Google……

This information comes from Search Engine Journal's Scott Krager:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/relevancy-is-king-says-google-vp-at-smx-london/43687/

In his opening keynote at SMX London, Amit Singhal, VP and Google Fellow, who rewrote the original Google algorithm upon his hire in 2000, said today that “Relevancy is King”. He added that Google looks at a combination of three signals (links, social, user actions) and how those signals support each other to build the organic result set.

While declining to “whiteboard the algorithm for you” Singhal did give hints of where Google is going and what they look for with the current algorithm.

Everything came back to “relevancy”. Google wants to always serve the user the most relevant result to the individual. And they will use whatever data sources they can to determine that.

Here are 5 points I found interesting from Sinhal’s talk.

1. Author Rank

Singhal mentioned that the author of a page influencing rankings. This may seem common knowledge, but it’s not something I had heard confirmed.

But keep in mind, Google looks at all signals in combination, not just one signal by itself.

2. Aberrations in Ranking Signals

The algorithm looks closely at aberrations in all signals. So buying that 1000 tweet package for $10 probably isn’t the best bet.

3. Search Plus Your World Redesign Holding Up International Releases

Singhal disclosed that Search Plus Your World was getting a bit of an overhaul in design and that until that was complete it would not be rolling out internationally.

4. Google uses human quality raters extensively in testing algorithm changes

Singhal discussed how Google tests new algorithm improvements, and one part I thought was interesting is that once an engineer writes an improvement, it first goes out for A/B testing to Google human quality raters before coming back to Google to potentially run live, real Google search traffic tests of the change.

5. Google’s new direct answers results in more searches

A webmaster in the audience asked a question “why even give Google our content if you’re just going to provide answers to users without sending them to our websites?” Amit replied that they found an increase in searches by users that get served a Google answer set (ie, what is the capital of Oregon?) and thus actually send out more traffic to websites because users have more time to dig deeper with more advanced queries once their initial basic query answer is found. (ie, why isn’t Portland the capital of Oregon?)

While this direct answer feature hasn’t been widely rolled out yet, it’s coming soon according to a recent WSJ article on the topic. And apparently this feature will actually result in more searches and more traffic to organic result sites. I’ll believe that this will really drive more traffic when I see it in analytics.

Regards,

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN

Owner/ Managing Partner

LTC Expert Publications

Phone: 888-404-1513

Email: valerie@ltcep.com

See our client samples: http://MySeniorService.com

Register for our webinars and marketing videos: http://LTCSocialMark.com

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