Marketing Defined

How to weather Google’s new Jagger Algorithm and October Page Rank update

Google has the SEO world in a storm with its current algorithm and page rank update nicknamed the Jagger update. I’ve been away for the better part of 6 days and woke up this morning to the usual “foul” cries about down rankings and disappearance of Page Rank in all the major search engine Forums.

Chuckle! Here’s one inappropriate down ranking - MSN.com is down to PR2.  So much for healthy competition - although I suspect Google is having a bit of fun and MSN’s Page Rank will revert to its previous healthy state quite soon.

Here are some thoughts on how to handle a disappearance of Page Rank or any down rankings you might have experienced.

This is a good time to reinforce the necessity for brushing up on a few *basics* of what is allowed and what should be avoided like the plague when optimizing web site content for Search Engines :

• avoid black hat tricks like hidden text… particularly hidden text in layers of CSS, door way pages, and sneaky redirects
• stay right away from automated web site generating tools, that is if you plan on having a long term career as a credible webmaster and need to earn any kind of decent recurring income from it
• gather back links or inbound links to a website progressively, in small batches at a time… anything more will alert the SPAM meters… and stick to seeking inbound links from web sites closely related to the main theme of your website
• stick to one theme and related topics for the content of a Blog or web site
• avoid publishing duplicate content… and … be sure to use  WP Permalink Redirect Plug Ins to avoid a Google duplicate content penalty [the structure of WP directories with identical posts being published  in Archives, Categories etc. and then selecting two or three categories to publish each post to... might cause a post to be indexed with different permalinks - ouch!]
• unique content and more unique content.. genuine webmasters have had it with the regurgitated garbage on SPAM blogs set up purely to generate Adsense income.. around 40% of a Blog’s content should consist of your own articles, ideas and opinions. A blog will experience consistent increases in both targeted web site traffic and loyal readers if you stick to your field of expertise and offer a unique point of view on industry topics.

Here are recommended articles on the implications of the Jagger Page Rank update and how to file a “reinclusion request” with Google if you have been banned.. apart from the many threads you will find on the leading SEO forums (that’s those whose servers haven’t crashed with the usual panic amongst webmaster)

• Google’s own engineer, Matt Cutts has tips on how you might weather the Jagger update
• the Search Engine Journal has this interesting post Google Jagger update shows new Page Ranks
• the Search Engine Journal article also covers Matt’s tips on how to contact Google to complain about SPAM and irrelevant web sites
• how to write to Google and appeal a ban, again from Matt Cutts, Google’s own webmaster for SEO and SEM community liaison, who gives these tips on filing a reinclusion request to Google

The Search Engine Journal article states that the call from Google for publishers and webmasters to identify SPAM websites and report these to Google might be viewed as:

“kind of an unofficial call for volunteers, but if all publishers and searchers put their heads together, identifying quirks in the Google rankings system, some good indexing is sure to come out of it”

My experience with this has not been positive. I have written to Google identifying a huge chain of one page SPAM web sites on 2 separate occasions, with little or no follow up and no firm action to date, except the usual promise that “the matter is receiving attention from Google’s team of specialist investigators”.  Mind you, this moron spammer even had the cheek to insert my domain name as a sponsor at the bottom of his illegal websites.

For the Page Rank aficionado who simply cannot wait a few more days… you may like to use the free Future Page Rank Tool at SEO Chat to gauge if your Page Rank has shifted prior to Google’s formal update which is but a few days away.

How often does Google update Page Rank?  About every 3 months or 86 days and an update is around the corner, at the end of October.

If you have not fared too well, it’s best to sit tight and wait at least another week or two until the Google page rank update has settled, before hitting the panic button and applying unnecessary tweaks to your code.

Please share your views on the current Google Jagger page rank update via comments.