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Never ending story: joy and frustration with your own website

Author Kurt Schauer

The world of website developers used to be fine: a creation was made with loving attention to detail and then put online. Subsequent changes, if they were necessary at all, were minimal at best. This has changed: Google in particular has turned a website into a never-ending story for website operators. This is something to bemoan, but it also offers opportunities. Google is forcing website operators to do more and more for the benefit of their customers and ultimately for their own good.

The Google Updates: Nothing is as old as yesterday's snow

In 2011, Google began to revolutionize its own search engine. Since then, English animal names have become part of the vocabulary of every search engine expert. Google has given its corresponding updates names such as "Panda," "Hummingbird," or "Penguin." Recounting their content in detail could fill entire textbooks, so here are just the most important key points: Overall, the search engine has become steadily more intelligent. It can now evaluate whether the content and links are useful, relevant, and helpful for the search query or not. This means:

Google recognizes whether the content is high quality or not
The search engine is able to assess the backlink structure of the page
Google can make a semantic assessment: How relevant is the page compared to other, similar ones?
The search engine robots also check the timeliness: How often is new content offered?
Google also analyzes user behavior: How often do users visit the site and how long do they stay?

Google also asks:

What is the total volume of visitors (traffic)?
Does the website also provide useful answers to specific questions that may be asked via voice input?

To make things a little more "exciting" for website operators, Google changes its own parameters from time to time. This applies to backlinks, for example. While previously such references with a particularly high PageRank were generally good, in spring 2016, for example, the search engine decided to withdraw the ability of some pages to pass on the PageRank via backlinks. This affected forums, for example, in which links were posted on a large scale. What was true yesterday can be completely different for Google tomorrow.

Pages need mobile design

A classic example of a change in mood at Google is "mobile design": around 30 percent of all searches now come from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. For a long time, Google kept the websites that offered the best content for the search queries at the top of the rankings, even if they did not have a mobile design. This has changed: without responsive design for mobile devices, you cannot end up at the top of the results list if the search query comes from a cell phone or tablet.

Recognizing the opportunities of Google's update policy

Google forces website optimization to become a “never ending story.” However, this very circumstance also offers two opportunities:

The content of your own site is constantly improving. Many of the updates were extremely annoying for website developers and operators. In general, however, they have all made sense so far. In terms of user-friendliness and customer orientation, the Google updates have had a positive effect.
You should actually check your own website regularly anyway to avoid the risk of viruses. More and more websites are being created using very cheap solutions such as Joomla or Typo3. These are vulnerable to malware attacks, especially if they are outdated. According to conservative estimates, this applies to 75 percent of WordPress and even 90 percent of Joomla sites. As a website operator, however, you have a duty to secure your own sites as well as possible. Since you have to work on your own website regularly anyway because of Google, you can do these mandatory tasks at the same time.

Google plays fair

It is also true that Google demands a lot, but the search engine also plays fair: Free tools such as Google Analytics are available to check how well your own website is doing in different categories. Google's Webmaster Tools should be on every website operator's favorites list.