SEO Consultant Esoos Bobnar

email: ebobnar at gmail.com

Affordable SEO Consulting for the Results-Oriented Online Business.

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Google Update Jagger

As you know, Google is in the process of a major index update, dubbed Jagger. Some sites have been hit badly, losing rankings and the accompanying traffic and revenue they previously enjoyed. If you're one of those sites, you're looking for answers that will help you get back on Google's good side as quickly as possible.

You've also likely searched the web and been frustrated at the lack of clear answers about this update. Most advice boils down to one concept: Don't spam. Sage advice, but hardly helpful or particularly relevant to the situation you're going through. How do you know what Google considers spam, especially when the definition is constantly changing?

I've analyzed dozens of sites that were hit hard by this update, and consulted directly with the owners of several of those sites. I then compared these sites with those that replaced them in top positions in Google. This involved putting the site through the typical backlink and on-page analysis, similar to what I would do for any new client.

A few consistent patterns have begun to emerge. While they don't apply across the board (and may prove to be premature, since the update is still in progress), they do allow me to feel comfortable enough to draw a few conclusions regarding Google update Jagger.

So rather than platitudes and speculation, let's cover the seven steps you need now to deal with this update in the quickest and most effective manner:

1. Wait for the update to shake itself out.

This can be exceptionally hard to when your traffic has driven of a cliff and you're losing significant amounts of money each day you're not ranked highly in Google. However, any changes you make now could actually do more harm than good. The update is not over—in fact it's still in stage three of what is likely to be a three-stage process.

This means that you're rankings could still return. The update is still in progress, and Google engineer Matt Cutts recently announced that phase 3 of the update was beginning to be visible from the 66.102.9.104 Google data center.

http://66.102.9.104/

Type your keywords into the box below to see results from the 66.102.9.104 data center:

The 66.102.9.104 data center is likely a preview of what Google will look like once this update is over. If you're ranking well for your keywords when searching using this data center, then the best advice is to hang tight, since you should see your rank improve across all of Google's data centers over the next week or two.

2. Do a spam check.

I've analyzed many sites which lost rank during this last update, and an overwhelming number of them were actually violating Google's terms of service in some way, but had managed to avoid a penalty until this update. This means that your site could very well have been penalized for legitimate reasons, and it's even possible that you could be violating Google's terms of service without knowing it.

Now would be a good time to review Google's webmaster guidelines to make sure your site meets their specifications.

While you're at it, check to see that you comply with Yahoo and MSN's webmaster guidelines. If you've been penalized by Google, it's likely only a matter of time until the other engines penalize you as well. Here's the links to get you started:

Again, unless your site has some really blatant spam, hold off changing anything until the update is over. If, at that point, you're still not ranking well, it will be a good idea to submit a reinclusion request to Google. There's a specific form for the purpose, which you can find at: http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py

Matt Cutts has a detailed guide to submitting your reinclusion request.

Keep in mind that the spam check is not just for your own site. If you're noticing a lot of spammy-looking results for your favorite keywords, Google wants to know about it. No update is perfect, and Google relies on users of its search engine to report odd or spammy search results to them. Again, Matt Cutts also has a post on contacting Google to give them feedback and help them fine-tune this latest update.

3. Get up to speed on what Google considers spam.

The webmaster guidelines can be a good place to start, but they tend to not give an entirely complete picture of what techniques could get you banned from a search engine. Analyzing sites that have been penalized in this last update, I'm finding a surprising number using techniques that used to be effective, but which Google has gotten much better at identifying and filtering out over the past year or two.

Most of these techniques involve link schemes designed to manipulate PageRank. One that's cropping up a lot in recently penalized sites is the mini-net. This technique involves creating numerous different sites and linking them together to give search engines the impression that the site is more popular than it really is.

At one point, this was a hugely effective technique. However, Google is now a domain registrar, which means they have access to detailed ownership and administrative information about a website, so it's easy for them to see all the sites that you own. Also, your competitors are becoming more savvy about recognizing this technique, and are increasingly likely to file a spam report on you.

Mini-nets can still be used effectively, but they're vastly more complicated than they used to be. They can either be approached in a completely transparent way, where each site can stand on its own as a unique and legitimate resource, or much greater steps must be taken to conceal them from detection. Both methods are discussed in detail in Search Engine News, a monthly subscribers-only publication I write for:

What's the best way to implement a "Mini-Net" strategy? ...and, is it safe?

The other linking technique we're seeing penalized more aggressively is the typical link farm approach, where people sign up for a program that involves each site hosting an identical "links page", each of which links to all the other sites in the link farm. Something like this explicitly violates Google terms of service and is easily detected.

There's been some speculation that sites with lots of reciprocal links are being penalized. While I haven't seen any clear evidence of this, I have noticed that sites which rely on off-topic links pages to provide the bulk of their links do tend to suffer. However, this is something that's been the case for some time, and this latest update has only accelerated the rate at which these types of sites are being moved out of top positions.

Over at Threadwatch, contributor cornwall points to an article that states the reciprocal linking is dead. While some of the article seems confusing and contradictory, its fundamental point is sound: if you're relying on reciprocal links to provide the bulk of your link popularity, you're asking for trouble. Again, this is something that's been predicted for a long time, and shouldn't come as news to anyone.

However, reciprocal links are hardly the "kiss of death" some have painted them to be. Danny Sullivan brings up a good point in a recent Search Engine Watch (SEW) thread when he mentions that Threadwatch has thousands of links to SEW, and SEW likewise links back to Threadwatch hundreds of times.

There is zero chance of Google penalizing either of these sites for linking to each other. This tells you that reciprocal linking, in itself, is not an automatic penalty. Of course, these are two authoritative sites with very natural incoming link structures, including tons of links from outside sources. If all their links were from reciprocating sites, or from links pages, then they might have a problem.

The bulk of the rankings I've seen lost were due to Google improving its ability to detect and filter out artificial incoming links structures, such as the mini-nets, link farms, and off-topic reciprocal links just mentioned. However, there are a host of other issues that could result in penalties, many of which most webmasters are unaware. For a complete list, see the recent Search Engine News report:

How to Avoid Getting Banned by the World's Most Important Search Engine

4. Prepare for the future

As mentioned in the last section, most sites I've seen lose ranking did so because they were using techniques that, at one point, were important to search engine optimization, but over time have become ineffective or even detrimental to ranking well in Google. Whether that technique's failure involved Google's increased ability to detect link schemes, the dwindling influence of on-page optimization, or simply bad advice from SEOs, many lost rankings were due to sites simply not keeping up with the latest in search engine optimization techniques.

In a fast-moving industry such as SEO, yesterday's information can actually be extremely harmful to your site's position in the search engines.

Google's ranking algorithm is primarily based on links, that much is clear. Think for a moment about the types of links that Google wants to reward, and you'll see why many SEO link-building techniques are on their way out.

The reason reciprocal links, run-of-site links, mini-nets, and even links pages have been fading in effectiveness is because these things are easy to detect and identify as artificial link structures. To succeed with Google going forward, you must strive to make your incoming link structure look as natural as possible.

This means having links coming from many different sites, with a wide range of PageRank scores, spread across a large number of IP addresses. It means anchor text that is not exactly identical on every link. It means having a high ratio of "deep links" to internal pages on your site. And it means links embedded within the content of the linking page, not pushed off on a footer or sidebar.

Put it this way: if you sell blue widgets, and the bulk of your link popularity comes from a few high-PageRank newspaper sites who are linking to you from the footer of hundreds of their internal pages with the anchor text "blue widgets", you're probably going to be in trouble, if not now, then in the near future. Likewise, if most of your link popularity comes from "add your link" free-for-all links pages on sites selling cheap cigarettes and online poker, you're likely to have problems.

5. Diversify.

It's become a bit of an industry cliche, but if you're relying on free traffic from Google to keep you in business, then you're putting yourself in a position where your livelihood can be wiped out any time Google decides to update its ranking algorithm. It's critical that you diversify the sources you get traffic from.

While this can be done through optimizing for other engines or though pay-per-click, you can actually get much better-converting traffic by cultivating relationships and joint ventures with other businesses related to yours. Customer traffic is much more likely to convert to a sale if that customer has had a trusted source recommend you to them. The biggest problem with search engine traffic is that there's no endorsement, no pre-sell, no trusted source saying "This site has really great stuff that I think you should buy."

Search engine traffic is actually fairly low quality traffic when compared to endorsed traffic coming from other sites. And establishing these business relationships can buffer you from the effects of algorithm shifts.

However, the highest quality traffic of all is traffic from customers who've already purchased from you in the past. There is no one in this world more likely to buy from you again than a satisfied customer. Does your business have a backend that allows you to continue selling to the same customers? Do you have a customer database that you can mine and contact through email or other means to upsell them on new products? If you have satisfied customers and you've been databasing them, then you may have a vast reservoir of the most qualified traffic imaginable right at your fingertips.

6. Deal with canonical issues.

This is a bit technical, but there have been issues raised in this latest update about Google's tendency to confuse variations of the same URL (canonical refers to the standard way of writing something, in this case a URL). In particular, Google will occasionally treat the "www" and "non-www" versions of a URL as belonging to two different sites. For example:

http://www.esoos.com

and

http://esoos.com

could be seen as two different sites.

Besides the problem of your PageRank being split when people link to the two different URLs, update Jagger has also revealed some possible duplicate content issues with these types of URLs. They've mostly been fixed now, but there have been reports of Google treating the URLs as belonging to two different sites, then treating a site as if it was duplicating its own content, resulting in poor rankings.

This is easily fixed with a .htaccess file. Here's the code I have running on my own site:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.esoos\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.esoos.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

Added to my .htaccess file, that easily redirects my URLs from the "non-www" version to the "www" version.

7. Look at the upside.

Remember that for every site that lost ranking, there's one that gained ranking. And those sites gained because they better matched the current profile Google looks for when it comes to ranking web pages highly. If a site has replaced yours during this last update, do a backlink analysis on them and find out why. How is their incoming link structure different than yours? In fact, while you're at it, do a backlink analysis on all the sites in the top 10 for your favorite keywords. There's something about these sites that Google likes (chances are it's lots of natural-looking backlinks from topically-related sources).

As far as the penalties are concerned, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable recently turned up a WebMasterWorld post that feels Google is being a bit too general in their classification of what is and isn't spam, and that's causing a lot of legitimate sites to get hurt.

That's true, but Google is dealing with a hugely complicated set of billions of documents and, army of PhDs notwithstanding, the Google ranking algorithm is still only a computer program, and is subject to inherent limitations as such. It's our job to discover what those limitations and generalities are, and get our sites to conform to them as closely as we can.

My feeling is that Jagger is not major shift in Google's ranking algorithm. Rather, it's a modest improvement in Google's ability to detect and filter out certain artificial link-building techniques. Many sites that lost ranking actually should have been penalized long ago, they just managed to somehow avoid detection until now. Sure, many legitimate sites got painted as spam with the broad brush Google uses, but that's an SEO fact of life.

Most sites were relying on outmoded SEO techniques that were easily detected and penalized. Those that stayed on the cutting edge (or had such great sites that they were able to ignore SEO altogether) have been largely unaffected. Today's mantra is the natural incoming link structure. Even if your site is SEO'd to the gills, its incoming links should at least look natural if you expect to do well.

The details of building a natural link structure are too many to go into here, but make up a significant part of the Unfair Advantage Book to Winning the Search Engine Wars, of which I'm a contributing author. We've also been writing extensively on building natural-looking links in a recent series of reports on the subscribers-only Search Engine News site.

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