Another big SEO update
Well this SEO update was unexpected. We knew it was only a matter of time before the mobile seo update would be announced but yesterday’s SEO announcement from Google took a lot of us by surprise. The main keywords you need to know from the announcement are, doorway pages, soon launch a ranking adjustment and have a broad impact.
What are doorway pages?
Google is calling this an “Update on doorway pages”. This kind of feels like a blast from the past. The last time I wrote anything about doorway pages was 7 years ago. People define it differently but here’s how Google currently defines it.
The first point is the one that is most common in my experience. In today’s video I show you some examples of this.
Who will the update affect?
It’s difficult to say but we think, from the above definition it will affect most businesses. Make no mistake this could have widespread repercussions. For instance most SEO companies have target pages. We have one for SEO Melbourne and another for SEO. Our SEO Melbourne page ranked us number 1 for about 7 years. In recent times we dropped back to 15 as we made the decision to not go and buy backlinks like a lot of our competitors and we found that the quality of leads coming from the phrase were not our target market. These days we are back on page one for SEO Melbourne but I think that the target page will get hit by the doorway page update because it is not linked in the navigation and it fits the second definition above.
Other pages like my series on SEO Consultant that I wrote a couple of years ago, probably won’t be affected by this change even though they are written to rank for a specific phrase.
Three Actions To Take
1. If you are currently ranking for city related searches by using the technique I show in today’s video you need to rewrite those pages. You need to make them unique and useful to the reader. Sites that are simply cookie cutting pages for different suburbs will definitely get hit by this update.
2. For major phrases that deliver traffic, take a snapshot of the top ten results today. When the change comes, compare the results. It will help you identify the winners and losers from the change and take action to become a winner.
3. If you currently have lot’s of mini sites pointing back to your main site, now would be a good time to nofollow the links or switch the sites off.
Let us know how you go. For my part I will be watching where certain of our pages currently rank and making adjustments after the update.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
