Over the decades, people have been studying ways to position themselves on the first page of Google. These techniques called SEO have been updated every year. Ever wondered how Google views your site Today?
In mid-2020, there was a live from semrush that talks exactly about SEO and how Google and other search engines view your website. I was able to learn several things from this live, so I wanted to highlight some special points in this article.
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Is there punishment for the Google Algorithm?
In the Round Table Live, we had the former Google employee Pedro Dias who knows a lot about SEO. He worked in the search quality department and carried out the manual punishment of giant sites that many fear. What can we learn from him?
In fact, according to Pedro, THERE IS NO ALGORITHM PUNISHMENT. When an update happens on Google, your site is not punished. What actually happens is that the search engines (Google) start to give more relevance to another site that is not yours.
What made my site miss visits from search engines like Google?
He saw that that site offered better content than his own according to the dozens of factors he uses to evaluate this. When our site misses visits in searches that were on the first page before, it was simply that it gave more relevance to other sites.
This does not mean that your article or content is inferior to others. Sometimes smaller and less optimized content can get in front of you. All of this because the social reach, linking and user experience managed to be greater than yours.
Has the Google search algorithm been updated?
There are NO MORE updates like penguin, panda and other names in isolation. Google has an algorithm package that "encompasses all of them", that is, all "robots" are together "forming one" that analyzes the sites and classifies them according to their criteria.
Despite this, constant Google updates can temporarily affect the reach of your site. Especially if it fails to meet the requirements of a good site according to Google. But there is no punishment, just improve your content.
If there is no penalty for Google robots then how is my site penalized?
There is only one way to suffer a penalty and lose all visits, either completely disappearing from search results or being pushed way back to the last pages. With a manual penalty, something rare, but that should be considered before doing anything prohibited by Google.
How does a manual penalty work? An employee reviews the site, usually did something very serious like buying links, advertising and didn't specify that it was one, blackhat among others.
After realizing that the site, which may belong to a large company or portal, did something wrong to manipulate the searches, the employee penalizes the site. For this reason, always use friendly and natural practices to gain authority on Google.
Are DA, PA and DS parameters for Google?
GIVES (domain authority), PAN (page authority) and DS (domain score) are really parameters to use in SEO? That was one of the questions raised on Live from semrush. Are these parameters considered by Google?
I've never been more mistaken about these parameters, as I just had to think about it a little. That quality backlinks to our site greatly influences our positioning or how Google makes our site relevant, everyone knows that it does.
Now, it makes no sense to acquire backlinks from high DA and PA if the site or content has no relation or relevance to your site. Let's look at some of the reasons not to use DA and PA as parameters for external linking:
- DA, PA and DS are parameters used and created by the tools we use to analyze and it was not created by Google, that is, we are not sure if the search engine uses this as a reference.
- There is still the PageRank created by Google, but it has not been updated for years externally, but INTERNALLY it exists being more complex than when it was visible our classification in which it was made available to webmasters many years ago.
- The only parameters we are sure that search engines, especially Google, use is the USER EXPERIENCE.
More and more it evolves so that the visitor / Internet user has a better experience when finding better results in searches and when browsing websites / blogs. Some parameters among dozens are:
- Easy site navigation;
- Have a search box on the website / blog (statistics show that people search a lot internally);
- Fast site loading;
- Solve the problem that the person sought;
Now you ask me, how does Google know that that visitor had a good experience on the site?
It simply “accompanies” the Internet user through Chrome! Yes, it can analyze practically everything a person did when navigating the site through the browser and also with Google Analytics.
How to make linkbuilding accepted by Google?
In the past they used a lot of guest post, but today they have to use it with a lot of moderation and planning. Article directories, websites have virtually no effect and can bring problems to the site.
As mentioned before, the practice of buying backlinks and Guest Post can cause problems for your site. Now, to do a good linkbuilding on the site, there are no secrets and extremely advanced and difficult techniques to implement.
We need to create an ACTIVE LINKABLE, meaning content that genuinely helps and encourages people to share it, citing it as a source because it is very comprehensive and has solved their problem/question.
And this is not just in a format like an article / post, the linkable asset can be an infographic, video, e-book, etc. There is no escape, we have to create the best article we can make.
Felipe Bazon gave a good tip on how to do very good internal linking. You go to Search Console and check the articles with the most views.
Analyzing these articles you choose which to link based on whatever you want to get more relevance, better in the searches. This criterion makes sense, because in Search console it is as relevant to Google, since it had many views and good placements.
Link anchor texts of extinct keywords
When linking an article, internally, avoid linking the exact keyword. Example:
In the phrase “HERE ARE THE TYPES OF SUSHIS MOST USED” if you want to link the post TYPES OF SUSHI you would link exactly “types of sushi” in that sentence, right? Or even just sushi.
I don't know exactly if it's wrong, but if done exhaustively it can hurt. You could link it in the phrase “TYPES OF SUSHI MOST USED”. Understood, it did not leave the context of the article that was linked.
How am I improving in the eyes of Google?
The May 2020 update caused a drastic drop in my main website, I lost several positions and my visits halved. Incredibly, my average position on the Search Console remains the same, indicating only that other sites have surpassed me.
I noticed that my main competitor, who ironically only translates articles from other languages, managed to steal my positions due to their huge social reach. Their page with almost 400,000 likes on Facebook generates a lot of share.
Unfortunately it is difficult to grow Facebook pages today, without any investment. Like me, you need to find a way to get back on track and achieve that social engagement that is lacking today.
I am also focused on making the above suggestion, linking whole sentences internally instead of isolated words. I want to use the Search Console and create structural pages to address the issues of the site's readers.
As a suggestion, I will create a STUDY GUIDE or something similar and in it, provide a complete guide to solve the reader's problem. Create free downloadable materials, and links can also be made to ebooks and others.
Create a page clearly showing the various ways to follow your site, whether through feeds, YouTube, subscribing to the newsletter, social media, and many others. It's possible to make a very comprehensive page making it easier for those who want to keep up.
I will not seek to gain more links for a while. It looks weird, but I believe that my site already has good relevance to compete with competitors, what is missing in my opinion are the items I listed above.
I think it is very risky to run after links based on DA and PA parameters. The most you need to do is eliminate toxic links. Of course, if your site is small, it may be good to get some relevant links, but in a friendly way.
Another thing I noticed is that backlinks appear naturally if your content is good. I have already managed natural links on sites like incredible.club, wikipedia and mosalingua without any effort. Why don't you focus on the content and wait for it to happen?
Another example is this site kevinbk.com, it has hardly any backlinks, I never made an effort to get links to it, but if you are reading this article, it means it has ranked. Not to mention that it has made many sales organically.
You can already see that making a complete and relevant content is more than enough to be referenced. Of course, we can speed it up by posting on social media and elsewhere.
In your case, searching for a link is not very smart today, as times are changing on Google. Register your business on Google Business, create profiles on social networks and focus on content!
These changes alone will provide a considerable improvement in the medium term. Those were the points I learned from Live do Semrush and with the help of my great friend Rafael AvelinO that has helped me mainly with SEO in Pinterest.