Secret to Winning Google Updates

Ever wonder how the search industry veterans can figure out and exploit Google updates even when Google doesn’t realize they updated something?  It is not about being lucky or being psychic.  The secret is good research.

Good research will expose the patterns in the algorithm.  Knowing these patterns you will see what is being rewarded and what is being penalized.  That information makes it much easier to create a website that Google rewards with good rankings.  How do we get this research?

Monitoring Baseline Rankings

In order to analyze the change in rankings you first need to know the starting rank positions. I recommend looking at the top 30 ranking URLs for a variety of serps.  In case you didn’t realize there are many different types of serps.  Yes Google has occasionally singled out and treated some genre of serps differently.  This is why you want to monitor  more serps then the one serp you actually care about.  The more serps you track the easier it will be to notice patterns.  Notice that I said to record the ranking URLs and not websites.  You should pay attention to the specific URLs ranking and not just the homepages.    Here are some examples that I monitor:

• Local Serps (i.e. new york flowers, 90210 florists, etc.)
• Brand Name Serps (BMW, IBM, Nintendo, etc.)
• Cutting Edge Serps (Viagra, Free Porn, Poker)
• 1st Tier Serps (New Cars, Life Insurance, Car Rental)
• 2nd Tier Serps (Custom Business Cards, Marathon Training, Bedding Sets)
• Plus many more…

Collecting Data

Once you know what URLs are ranking it is time to collect some vital statisitics.  I like to record the number of backlinks the URL has,  how many backlinks the entire site has and the general quality of the backlinks.  Does the site have backlinks from quality, relevant homepages or are the backlinks filled with ROS, off topic, blog spammed link farms.  I also pay attention to how many pages are on the site and the page layout.

Secret Tip – Collect More Data

Most new people make a mistake at this point and this is why many of them have trouble.  You are monitoring 100 serps in a variety of serp genres.  For each URL you collected a complete profile of vital statistics.  It was alot of work but you did it and now can rest easy. WRONG, you need to re-collect data regularly.  I would recommend every two weeks or once a month.  Backlinks change, websites add content and redesign their layouts.  You need to know if the rankings changed because your competition added 100 new pages of content or had their blog mentioned in Yahoo news or Google updated.  That is why you need to stay vigilant.

Correlation is not Causation

With all of this great data you should be able to notice patterns.  Good for you.  Be careful that you do not read too much into the patterns.  For example have you noticed that almost all #1 ranking websites have a copyright symbol posted on the bottom of the page.  I guess you need a copyright notice to be #1.  This is more likely just a mild case of correlation (similarities) as opposed to causation (cause and effect).  However if you notice a very weird correlation like 40 clean websites that used to be #1 last month are all now ranking at exactly position #6 then you have probably stumbled across a Google glitch.  Yes, Google makes mistakes and often they do not even realize they made a mistake and yes the position six mistake was a real situation.

Your continuous research and observations can help you to better understand the Google search updates and also alert you to changes your competition make.  Both of those pieces of information are a good way to help you boost your profits.