As I reported yesterday at Search Engine Land with Google Changes Ranking Advice, Says Build Quality Sites Not Links - Google made a change to their messaging on the ranking article help document. This was first spotted by @Baeumlisberger and it is an important change.
As I said yesterday, this "change is to keep Google consistent with their general change in messaging that content is what webmasters should focus on, not links."
What was the actual change? The line use to read, "In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages." Google changed the last part to read "by creating high-quality sites that users will want to use and share."
So it is no longer about increasing the number of quality links, it is more about increasing people who want to use and share your content. Again, this is Google's new messaging.
It is not to say that links are not as important and that social is more important. Social is currently not so important, but that may change in the future. It is the way webmasters should think about their content.
GOOGLE PANDA
Google Panda eyed up your website like it was bamboo. Did you have duplicate content on your website or pages with poor content? Did you have too many paid ads on your website? Did you have overly optimised content with the same keyword repeated too many times? If you answered yes to any of these questions (or heaven help us, all of them), then Google Panda was going to have a feast.
In addition to this, we have also seen Google's Above the Fold Page Layout algorithm update play a role in how important your on-page content is.
GOOGLE PENGUIN
Google Penguin specifically targeted spammy link building practices – SEO tactics that involved building hundreds or thousands of links from poor quality, irrelevant websites to artificially inflate your ranking for particular keywords. Too many low quality links? Sayonara, links! Too many links with the same anchor text? Hasta la vista, links!
These strategies quickly saw several websites lose their rankings and have gone a long way in putting to rest the most unsavory tactics in the SEO industry.
UNNATURAL LINK WARNINGS
In the summer of 2012, Google started to send website owners unnatural link warnings about the back links they had. This was another death knell for the importance of the back link – websites that received this warning often saw their rankings completely disappear overnight and had a real struggle in recovering their rankings and their traffic. No website was safe - even the BBC received a warning.
Website owners were encouraged to spend time and effort in removing the bad quality links that were potentially causing their website harm and then submit a Reconsideration Request. Although Google did not provide any specific details about which links had caused their link warning, they would then go on to unveil the Disavow Tool. For website owners that had tried their best but could not remove all the poor quality links they found, they could submit a list to Google and tell them to effectively ignore them in its algorithm of how it ranks websites.
Further to this, Google has publically announced its active targeting of link networks with several already devalued in Google. SEOs that have traditionally placed their emphasis on creating link networks (link wheels, link pyramids or whatever you want to call them), have seen some of their practices fall by the wayside.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU AND ME THEN?
There are no short cuts in SEO! Google has pretty much laid to rest the tricks that people used in the past to get you ranking seemingly overnight.
Google has got much better at analysing your website and seeing how much value it provides users. Their shift away from links has placed a greater emphasis on the following metrics:
Content – specifically the amount of content, the quality of content and how relevant it is
Engagement with the website including:
Time on site
Bounce rate
Pages visited per visit
Social trail – endorsements on social networks are a sign to Google that this website is worth being shared (currently social shares are less easily manipulated than links and therefore a more reliable trust/authority signal).
Reviews of the website/company and presence in Google commodities such as Google+ or YouTube.
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