Author: Kurt Schauer
The world of the website developer used to be just fine: a creation was crafted with loving attention to detail and then put online. Afterwards, any changes—if they were even necessary at all—were minimal at best. This has changed: above all because of Google, your own web presence has become an endless story for site operators. You can complain about this, but this circumstance also offers opportunities. For the benefit of their customers and thus ultimately for their own good, Google forces website operators to do more and more.
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 firmly embedded in the vocabulary of every search engine expert. Google has named its corresponding updates after names such as „Panda,“ „Hummingbird,“ or „Penguin.“ Detailing their content could fill entire textbooks, so here are only the most important key points: Overall, the search engine has steadily become more intelligent. It can now assess 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 evaluate the backlink structure of the page
- Google can make a semantic assessment: How relevant is the page compared to other, similarly positioned ones?
- The search engine’s robots also check for timeliness: How often is new content offered?
- Google also analyzes user behavior: How often do users visit the page and how long do they stay?
Google also asks:
- What is the overall visitor traffic?
- Does the website provide useful answers to specific questions that may be asked via voice input?
To make things even more „exciting“ for website operators, Google also changes its own parameters from time to time. This applies, for example, to backlinks. While such references with a particularly high PageRank were generally good in the past, the search engine decided, for example, in spring 2016 to revoke the ability of some pages to pass on PageRank via backlink. Affected were, for example, forums where links were posted on a large scale. What was valid yesterday can be completely different at Google tomorrow.
Pages require design for mobile devices
A classic example of a mood swing at Google is „Mobile Design“: Around 30 percent of all search queries now come from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. For a long time, Google still kept the websites with the best content for 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 rank high in the results lists if the search query comes from a mobile phone or tablet.
Recognizing the Opportunities in 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 one’s own site continuously improves. Many of the updates were extremely annoying for website developers and operators. However, it is generally true that they all made sense so far. In terms of user-friendliness and customer orientation, Google updates have had a positive effect.
- One should actually review their own website regularly anyway to prevent the risk of viruses. Increasingly, websites are created with very inexpensive solutions like Joomla or Typo3. These are susceptible to malware attacks, especially when they are outdated. According to cautious estimates, this applies, for example, to 75 percent of WordPress and even 90 percent of Joomla sites. As a website operator, however, one is obligated to secure their own pages as well as possible. Since one has to work on their own website regularly due to Google anyway, such mandatory tasks can be completed at the same time.
Google plays fair
In addition, it is 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 performs in different categories. Google’s Webmaster Tools should therefore be on every website operator’s favorites list.
Do you have questions?
Eliana Gramer
Head of Web/Digital
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