Google Latest Updates - Is SEO Died?

That’s just stupid, honestly. I’ve seen so many “Is SEO Dead” threads and articles popping up everywhere telling people that all hope is lost, and that’s just ridiculous. SEO will NEVER die, period!

You simply need to adjust your strategy a bit, write high-quality content and stick to white-hat SEO techniques if you’re doing any form of link building. That’s it, that’s all you need to do to “conquer” any update Google throws at you.

If you write something on your website, ask yourself the following question: “Is this what I want to see on Google’s first page if this is what I searched for?” If you can answer honestly and it’s “yes”, then you should be fine. It’s all about relevancy and user experience. If Google feels you’re REALLY contributing to the WWW then they won’t touch your rankings. But if you’re doing anything sneaky to try and fool Google or just try to make a quick buck without providing sufficient value to your readers, whatever good rankings you have now certainly won’t last long. People who says SEO is dead have no idea what they’re talking about, they’re quitters, wannabes or most likely, -both.

• Here’s a breakdown of the 2 algorithm changes made by Google that you can use to inspect, fix and master to avoid ever getting slapped again.

Farmer/Panda Updates: As stated before, the Panda update was implemented to remove article directories and thin-content sites (like minisites) from the SERPS. The de-indexing of many article directories lead to a lot of sites losing backlinks on a major scale, which is what caused some sites’ rankings to drop dramatically. More recent updates (Dec 2011 – Apr 2012) targeted private blog networks like SEO Link Vine (this one hit in Dec 2011 judging from personal experience), Build My Rank and High PR Society just to name a few. Panda was also said to target web 2.0 sites, but this varies depending on the amount and quality of content posted on these sites.

• How to Fix your Site that was Hit by Google Panda?

Easy, focus your link building efforts on social networks and don’t spam the living hell out of the internet with every flashy SEO tool you can get your hands on. Stick to white hat SEO and you’re good to go.

The Dreaded Penguin Updates: The Penguin update focused more on the on-page SEO of sites, penalizing sites that had too many stuffed keywords in every post or page. Sure, it also targeted anchor text backlinks and obvious footprints from backlinking, but is more focused towards your on-page content itself and not so much the off-page factors.

• How to Fix your Site after being Penguin Slapped?

This is what I did, and it worked. Since I myself has been found guilty of a bit of keyword stuffing here and there (especially the older posts), I’ve had some keywords drop from page 1 into oblivion overnight. Here’s what I did to fix my site after being hit by the Penguin updates.

I edited each and every one of my posts that made me money and removed many duplicate keywords to get a keyword density of between 0.8% and 1.2%. My rankings are coming back in a big way, here’s a screenshot of my Google Webmaster Tools account (on the left) to show you the proof that this is the way to “beat Google Penguin”. These rankings have disappeared but are making a big comeback after I’ve edited my posts.

Another thing that triggers a visit from the wrath of the Penguin, is linking to unrelated sites. So delete any links pointing to outbound sites that are unrelated, because that will get you slapped faster than you can say “Penguin”.

That’s it, that’s all you need to do! I also suggest following Matt Cutts on Google Plus and keep a close eye in what he has to say. Know that it will take some time to get your rankings back, but if you follow my advice it’s sure to come back sooner rather than later. Know that SEO is NOT dead and it will never die, so ignore anyone telling you otherwise.

You now have everything you need to know to recover from both Panda and Penguin updates, so get to work and focus on producing great content mixed with relevant, white hat link building techniques.