How To Survive Google Latest Algorithm SEO Changes

Search engine optimization is one of the most important and misunderstood components of a marketing strategy.

Search engines constantly change their algorithms to meet the customer needs. These changes occur multiple times every year.  Leaving some industries completely devastated removing their search traffic or increasing their traffic.

Today I’m going to share with you my view on the trends shaping the new search engine results and the opportunities for those in content marketing.

New Ranking Factors Change The Industry

The big transition this year that we’re focusing on is the mobile first indexing – i.e.  this is the crawling and indexing of your website using mobile first approach to determine your contents rank and usability on a mobile platform.

Google is now a believer in the mobile first web designs on its ranking algorithm. When we talked about ranking on Google for mobile first, we’re talking about friendliness as a ranking factor on a mobile device. That being said, there really is no mobile-first index that we can compare our websites to on Google or any other platforms because it doesn’t exist. We only have indexing that collects this data from a desktop first approach. The addition of mobile friendliness to a desktop first approach is not a new index.

The reason that Google latest algorithm has recently introduced this is that there’s been a shift in the devices that people are using their platform with. Specifically we’re seeing an increase in mobile devices over desktops, the traditional web browsing device. You would assume that with more people using phones that it would become the most important device and use an algorithm that reflects this information. It appears there is no motive to create a new mobile index. There’s only a desktop index and that’s what everybody is running on.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at the ranking factors for mobile and what different variables they’re looking at,. We know they test for responsiveness, experience. We also being reminded that proper structure in our website is important as a new trend with mobile users is voice searches. In order to rank for voice searches a question must be posed in H2 heading followed by a non H2 heading.

Some are saying Google is going to be ranking every search based on mobile experiences. There is no true and conclusive response from google.

The Word On Voice Searches

Some would consider this a sleeping giant among search ranking factors that is currently undervalued and hold a tremendous weight when we look at the addition of voice searches appearing.

From data that we’ve found from different sources on the web, we can conclude that the search volume that is voice base is continuing to increase. And is likely to overtake the market just as mobile-first devices have with desktops.

These Digital assistants devices deliver only one search result. ie alexa, google assistant, etc. using Google latest algorithm.

So why does it matter if my clients are searching for my products using their voice or not? And the answer is voice content delivery only provides one answer. Where as, when browsing on my mobile device or desktop I can get an entire page on Google and get up to 10 different websites or answers for what I’m looking for.

This makes it really competitive in order to reach the top spot or top search engine results page (SERP).  It also complicates our understanding of our marketing goals as well as what is required to meet those goals and how we measure the impact of our content towards reaching that goal. It’s really concerning that there is a big misunderstanding and misinformation about how to handle the future as it relates to voice technology and search engines.

We’re limited in what we can measure with voice and it’s no longer connected to our Google Analytics. It’s important that we highlight that this market exists because there is an opportunity to gain organic traffic from these voice search queries.

Google Stealing Your Clicks?

When Google algorithm first began we saw that there was an exchange between content creators and Google. Google would allow robots to index people’s websites for free to supply all of the information anybody using their services would need on these search engine result pages(SERP). In return for this Google latest algorithm would allow links that would go back to the person’s website so that they can get the extra views or maybe sell a product and get some kind of conversion going.

In today’s search engine results the clicks have started to slow and the process is slowly moving towards a pay-per-click system. Also known as search engine marketing. Its almost viewed as a privilege to be on a search engine now. Google is no longer relying on these content creators and they’re developing no click features that would make sure that these visitors stay on to Google’s page. To justify this they are looking for an increased presence on their own platform. This includes answer boxes, featured Snippets, knowledge panels, Google post- these are all really different ways that Google has made it so that the change off of their platform is reduced. So we really see a decrease in the organic traffic from Google’s algorithm over time because of these implementations.

With these changes we have seen a number of new tools that have been implemented to try to prioritize Interactive content, content that drives experiences, stories that are data-driven, and that drive clicks rather than providing a simple answer. Many people now are doubling down on the creation side to fill the searches. We’re also looking at Creating content for platforms that Google deams a priority for example YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Business panels.

Building these Brands and using different social media websites and other companies related to Google that have a high Domain Authority is really starting to emerge as the winner to influence your publishing. This is done by link building or building domain authority by association. This is the idea that content partnership and collaboration through multiple sources of media drives increase traffic. This is how many people have been able to dominate the SERP for their top words .

More Than SERP Metrics

What Google latest algorithm SERP means is to completely try to destroy organic brand traffic. It seems as though marketing managers need to make a change to continue to compete.

The end result that many marketing managers have reached is that we have lots of metrics for looking at the clicks and the traffic and our reach. The real and only metric that we really should be paying attention to is the ROI. 

This may be the view if you have somebody who’s seeking a pure search engine marketing goal. But in the world of content marketing the route from SERP to sale isn’t as defined as it may be with pay-per-click ads. In this scenario this is where some of the other ranking factors that we’re not looking at such as influence and Authority are likely to be involved. 

So the shift that we’re really seeing in the marketing industry is the loss of clicks in order to build influence. When we talk about brand marketing, building influence is what people are looking at and value the most.

This is where content marketing is gaining a greater advantage over traditional marketing techniques like search engine marketing.

To Summarize 

The google latest algorithm adjustments for Google are going to continue, even if you can’t compete with the new self-serving strategies the Google has. Your organization still stands to gain strong benefits from switching to the new ways of the algorithm changes. But do note that Google also values experiences and storytelling that satisfies the customers needs. Diversify your marketing strategy to avoid a huge drop in traffic when the changes happen and focus on whichever strategy meets your long term marketing goals.