SEO & Google’s Algorithm: How It Works | Velocity Agency | New Orleans

Google is making the search engine leg race to the number one spot more exhausting than ever and with the company’s estimated 600 changes to its algorithms made annually, the finish line may never be in sight. Search engine optimization (SEO), however, remains such a crucial ingredient to ensure organizational success.

In layman’s terms, an algorithm is a recipe that instructs a computer on how to complete a given task. Google’s algorithms pertain to yielding search engine results that are relevant to the users search queries. Today, Google’s algorithms take into account around 200 factors when determining website relevancy, a pool that is consistently growing and changing.

In it’s toddler years, Google search engine visibility was somewhat easy to obtain by stuffing a website with relevant or irrelevant keywords. As the search engine evolves, it is becoming more targeted at finding these non white-hat SEO techniques and penalizing websites for these practices. Today, Google continues to release major updates to the algorithm like Panda, Penguin, and the new Pigeon that can change a website’s traffic overnight.

Now more than ever, website relevance has to be about brand building through relevant, useful content related to what users are searching for. Keyword stuffing and paid links are now replaced by content strategy and development, a task that takes time. Strong content formation includes a hefty chunk of information that is both up to date and relevant to the users search and has not been respun, republished, duplicated or crowded by keywords.

Links are still valuable however, but their value is changing. Link building, much like keyword stuffing, became one of the easier SEO techniques to achieve higher rank results. Because of this, webmasters began building links independently via paid links or article farms. In order to fight these practices, Google introduced the algorithm update Penguin to seek out websites purchasing links or utilizing other spammy link building techniques and dropping their ranking position on search engine results. In the age of Penguin, it’s important to recognize that black-hat practices of buying links are no longer going to help your website by increasing search engine ranking position; it’s now about building relevant, qualified links by influencers in your network and submitting your content to social news sites like Reddit, Digg, or Google+ rather than submitting to article farms where your content will be republished on other sites.

Outside relevant content writing and qualified link building, another of Google’s algorithms focuses on website design optimization in regards to user experience. Google introduced the Panda algorithm update to seek out websites with low quality content and poor user experience. Websites that introduced high-quality content and constantly introduced new, fresh content into the mix were rewarded with increases in organic traffic. Sites with low quality content, broken links, and poor functionality lost out with Panda and organic traffic dropped exponentially – sometimes overnight.

It becomes more important than ever to have a team of people who understand how to utilize classic search engine tools and combine that with superior content formation in a timely and consistent basis. Paid links and keyword stuffing are no longer king , solid brand building with relevant, unique content on a sturdy foundation is.

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Velocity Agency is a digital marketing and advertising firm specializing in digital and internet marketing & advertising, print, web design, graphic design, film, and HD video promotion and post-production. Velocity serves clients all over the United States from our Metairie, LA office just outside of New Orleans by strategically implementing proprietary tools and techniques to get you the most conversions for your business through lead generation, cost-per-acquisition, and top line revenue.