As noted in our post from last week, there are many changes that are currently in the developmental stages and will be carried out this summer by Google that will effect SEO. To those that practice white hat SEO, this could be great news, but those that are guilty of black hat and link spamming tactics could have a long road ahead of them. While several points have already been discussed, Matt Cutts also expanded upon additional changes and alterations that are underway.
- Sophisticated Link Analysis- Google is currently in the process of creating a more intricate and successful system for link analysis. While it is still in the early stages, the hope is that this system will allow Google to better determine the quality of links to a site, how trustworthy they are and ultimately be more successful in determining which sites should rank for a given search term. In an ideal situation, this would devalue those that are performing link-spamming and push honest SEOers above them.
- Authority Boost- Google is also making efforts to do a better job in detecting sites that possess authority in a specific field, industry, etc., and this should ultimately allow certain sites to rank higher according to specifications in the algorithm. If you are an authority on a certain topic and you are posting and providing new content about it regularly, the goal is that this will give you the boost you need to drive related queries back to your site over those of lesser value or influence.
- Panda Sympathy- As discussed in the past and negatively experienced by a great number of websites, Google’s Panda update focused specifically on filtering and stopping any sites consisting of poor quality content from achieving high ranking and top search results. Many sites, however, were found to be in a “borderzone, gray area,” and were unfortunately impacted anyway. Google hopes that with some alterations they will be able to soften the effects for those sites that were negatively affected in the past but do in fact carry other signals of quality. Cutts stresses that he believes that Google has found some promising signals to use in helping to define these sites that are a bit blurry in the eyes of the search engine, and this could ultimately create a positive change in their ranking and results.
With these points considered along with the others presented by Cutts, there should be many webmasters and especially those who own smaller businesses and practice genuine, white hat SEO who are excited and look forward to the aforementioned changes by Google. The alterations are sure to be a gradual, highly detailed process, but the results should prove once again that dishonest, black hat web tactics will eventually catch up with you and ultimately do much more harm for you than good.