May 2014 Panda Update is a Good Step Forward for SEO
How to Succeed With SEO After The Update
Until this last Google Update in May, Google was pretty easy for SEOs who had the resources to quickly rank websites-even in the most competitive markets. Before around May 21st 2014 I saw many examples of new websites on new domains rising quickly to the top for searches like “New York personal injury lawyer”, “Los Angeles divorce attorney” and “Houston personal injury lawyer”. When I say “to the top” I mean above the local results in the number 1 and number 2 spots in Google.
Documented Changes Based on My Research Regarding Off-site SEO
In my analysis of “before” May 2014 and “after” 2014, this is what I have discovered to be the impact on off-site SEO. There are others, but these are the two I have seen personally.
1-A significant reduction in the number of inbound keyword based “text links” to your website.
2-Length of time for Google to “credit” your site for new links.
3-More importance placed on site age
4-More importance placed on on-site content development.
Text Links to Your Website
There are many types of links you can get to your website:
- Follow
- No Follow
- Sitewide
- Not Sitewide
- Branded Links
- Naked Links
- Keyword Text Links
The links I have seen to be most affected by the last update are the keyword text links, branded links, and naked links.
Specifically, before this last update, it was ok to have between 8 and 12% of your links from one targeted search phrase, like “Houston personal injury lawyer”. Since the update, many sites that had suffered in the rankings if they had more than 6% of their links from these types of search terms.
Examples of link profiles:
“Penalized” Example (suffered in the rankings)
This is the link profile that dropped 50 spots in the Google Search Results for the term “houston personal injury lawyer”
Successful Example (#1 Rankings for the search term)
This is the link profile for the number one ranked law firm for the same search term:
More details coming soon…
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