New Google Algorithm: What You Need To Know

For some this is old news and for others it will be the first time you have heard about it.

If you haven’t heard, Google recently changed its search algorithm.

In very simple terms, Google has decided to ‘penalize’ the websites / blogs that copy other people’s content.

I recently found a top-performing site that was copying my content (and many other peoples content) and it was ranking very high in the search engines.

Google have put their foot down and said ‘no more’. They are no longer tolerating such activity.

The roll out of the new Google algorithm started back in late February and will continue to do so across the world over the next few weeks/months.

Google state they expect that 12% of websites / blogs will be impacted.

I’m not sure if they mean 12% will be impacted in a negative way or the 12% also includes those who gain from the new change.

You see…I’ve been looking at my visitor stats and I believe my site has been impacted in a POSITIVE way.

If the positive impact is not due to the algorithm change then it is a big coincidence!

Since the Google algorithm has been updated I’ve experienced an 18.74% increase in the number of visitors to my site. That 18.74% increase is in comparison to the number of visitors I had in the month before leading up to the algorithm change.

And when comparing the stats where visitors come to my site direct from a Google search the number has increased by 30.15%. That means 30% more people are now finding my site via the Google search engine.

Is that because all the ‘bad boy’ sites that copy content have fallen down the search engine rankings and mine has gone up?

I like to think so and for me, it is too much of a coincidence.

Why has WeBuildYourBlog benefited from the algorithm change?

I think this because of a number of reasons.

1. Unique Content

95% to 99% of the content on this blog is unique i.e. it is not published anywhere else. If any of the content has been published elsewhere through people copying my content… Google knows that the original post was published here first.

So reason (or rule) number one or perhaps we should say guide number one is only publish unique content on your blog.

2. Type of Content

I believe Google is putting more and more emphasis on the type of content you are publishing on your blog. And what I mean by content are things like text, images and videos.

If you are just going to use text-based content then I would always recommend you add at least one image to the post.

But even better…

Start adding your own videos as well. And I don’t mean videos from YouTube… I mean add videos hosted on your own host account.

You may have seen in my recent “speeding up your blog expert series”, all of the posts were video-based. I did that for two reasons. One because it was easier to share and show you what I have actually done to speed up the blog and two, I wanted to see if using video made any impact on my search rankings.

Some of my videos in that “Improve Your Blog Speed Series” are in position one for certain keyword phrases.

When adding video to your blog you also need to have a plug-in that creates a video site map as the Google XML site map can only read text-based publications.

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I recently invested in a video site map plugin. The video site map tells Google that you have videos on your blog and it will add the video type blog posts to the search engines.

Here is the link to the plugin: Video Site Map Plugin

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So reason number 2 – mix up your content. Use text, images and videos.

3. Back links

Some will say the more back links you have the better.

Others will say only get back links from high quality sites.

No one really knows the true answer however my belief is that you should get a mixture of back links from a variety of sources.

I have over 65,000 back links to this blog coming from a huge variety of sources including article directories, forums, guest posts, RSS directories, comments and so on.

When creating back links it is important not to just back link to your main domain i.e. your homepage. You want to also back link to internal pages and individual blog posts.

You want to let Google know that your entire site is worth linking to, not just the homepage.

Check out my popular blog post, How to get backlinks.

So reason number 3 – build backlinks from a variety of sources. Check out the link above to see how you can drastically improve the number of backlinks you have.

4. Internal Linking

This sentence is directly from the Google site:

“The number of internal links pointing to a page is a signal to search engines about the relative importance of that page.”

Which means you should link from one blog post to another where and when relevant.

See my short video on how to do this using a free plugin:

Why Internal Linking

In summary and you’ve heard it time and time again and you can hear it again right now…

It all boils down to publishing unique original quality content that people want to read /view and providing your blog with as many internal links and back-links from a variety of sources.

If you think there’s a cheats way of getting more visitors more traffic to your blog by copying other people’s content then you are mistaken.

Have you experienced any changes in your stats as a result of the Google algorithm change?

Please share your views in the comments below.

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