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How Will Google’s PageRank Update Affect Your Business?

As most people will now be aware, Google released another PageRank update yesterday. Being three months along from the last update which occurred 6th February this year, the arrival didn’t come as a great surprise. With updates in November, February and now May, it would appear that three months appears to be the emerging timescale between each one. Although you may not have seen any changes in your PageRank just yet, the process is currently underway and any outstanding changes are expected to be updated soon.

Introduced in 1998, PageRank is basically the mathematical algorithm used by Google to work out the popularity of any given page. This popularity can be based on a number of factors, including the number of backlinks and outbound links it contains, as well as looking at the attention of its audience. It is essentially a tool used to represent the probability that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page.

The main question on everyone’s lips at the moment however, is how will this affect my website? Google has maintained on several occasions that webmasters and bloggers shouldn’t worry about their page rank as this doesn’t affect your search engine positions or the amount of traffic to your site. Although Google never releases specific information behind the actual processes of the PageRank algorithm, rumours often suggest that ranking is based purely on the level of quality of a site. This is one of the reasons why these regular updates have been been described in the past as being a purely motivational method for people to continue providing great content and sites.

Most of the experts would regard PageRank as having no bearing on SEO. So even if your page rank has changed but you’re still enjoying first page search engine results you should continue to see the benefits of presiding over your competitors, such as more brand awareness and extra visitors to your site. Nevertheless, at SEO Positive, we endeavour to provide our clients with good quality content and strong backlinks and inbound links so they are likely to see a positive page rank alongside their consistent SEO results.

To keep up to date with all the latest technological advances and trends of the online business world, it is really important to follow the top industry leaders. Whilst we’ve been busy securing the final preparations for our own exhibition at this year’s Internet World Event, we’re also looking forward to visiting several other talks.

To celebrate their twentieth anniversary this year, Internet World have set up their Agenda-Setters programme, which hosts presentations from some impressive pioneers of the digital marketing sector. In particular, I and other members of our team are looking forward to hearing Ian Carrington from Google’s advertising department discuss the mobile evolution. From this, we are hoping to gain a better understanding of how mobile technology is affecting the future of online marketing. Through listening to the ideas and strategies of different companies, we can develop our own methods to help us provide even better results for our clients.

We are also planning to attend a speech from David Coplin, the Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, entitled “How the digital consumer has become dispersed, disruptive and in control”. Being given an insight into the thoughts and approaches of such influential innovators is such a valuable opportunity, so our team are looking to take advantage of this by adapting our own strategies to incorporate any useful tips we pick up at the event. In the weeks after the event we will be discussing the most effective ways to implement what we have learnt.

The most effective online promotion techniques are the ones that take on board a wide spectrum of ideas, so we’ll be visiting a number of talks across the three days from other big names in online business, such as Yahoo! and O2 Wi-Fi. At SEO Positive we regularly attend industry events such as this, to update our platforms and tactics. By holding our own presentations this year we are also hoping that others can obtain useful information and advice from us on a range of SEO topics. In addition to this we are welcoming guests to our stand to discuss our services further.

With the news of Google’s recent major algorithm updates flooding our media, it couldn’t be clearer that the business of search engine optimisation is set to change drastically in the coming weeks. With Google reforming the principles of its ranking systems to favour sites that focus on high quality content rather than over-optimisation, many SEO companies could find themselves having to re-think their approach to search engine optimisation.

Who does this affect most? The recent changes outlined by Google show a lack of tolerance towards businesses that use more underhand methods to achieve high rankings. Anyone being considered to abuse the system through tactics such as exchanging too many links, or buying back links and putting them on less relevant sites, can expect to be targeted. There is also expected to be a backlash on cynical approaches used by certain SEO firms like placing a large emphasis on techniques that calculate the percentages of keyword density, for example. In short, Google is attempting to level the playing field between those who use extensive optimisation and those who don’t.

At SEO Positive we have always concentrated foremost on the needs of the client. By striving to use reasonable SEO techniques we place a solid emphasis on the importance of writing good quality, relevant content for our customers, rather than relying primarily on the amount of links we can include.  To keep up with the recent changes, we plan to continue producing high quality on-page content and articles for our clients to keep their online presence as high as it should be.

What else can you do to keep your rankings high? With Google shifting its favour towards sites with great content rather than those who concentrate on optimisation, (announcing plans to handle this area itself), it could be easy to be disheartened, especially from the view of an SEO company. However, things aren’t as bad as you might think. Rather than panic, there are plenty of ways you can continue to dominate the search engines.

Alongside the initial staples of excellent content and articles, it is definitely worth setting up a regular blog post. This not only boosts your online presence but gives consumers more information about what you do. Just be sure to keep your posts relevant and interesting for the reader.  For anyone not already doing so, it may also be worthwhile venturing into the world of social media, to see how this can play a part in raising awareness online. There are such a high number of people using networking sites now, that this is one of the fastest ways to make yourself available to your audience.

Algorithm changes are not the only alteration to Google’s search plans, however. As part of its campaign to make the GoogleBot smarter, the company has revealed its aims to introduce semantic understanding to the system, by including more answers in its results. It is areas like this we can explore and try to embrace to stay ahead of our competitors, but most importantly, keep our clients happy. We intend to see this as an opportunity to show ourselves as a hard working reputable company against others who might resort to frowned upon strategies to gain short term success.

The single, most important thing we intend to do here at SEO Positive is to stay ahead of the game. There are always challenges in the SEO industry, but by staying adaptable and responding quickly to Google’s changes, there is no reason why we can’t continue to help our clients enjoy first page results.

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