Search Engine Optimization

Most of you probably know about the algorithmic change that Google made on May 1^st of this year.  To ensure that higher quality pages would surface when people search for long-tail queries, Google made a few tweaks.  As a result, many sites have found that the rankings of their pages that target long-tail keywords have dropped significantly.  Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that fewer people search for individually but that provide a significant amount of traffic over time.

Websites that were hit the hardest by Google’s Mayday change are large sites that have pages deep in their archives that don’t attract many inbound links.  Ecommerce websites, in particular, have product pages that don’t get many links or feature any unique content.  Essentially, pages that are several clicks away from the home page and that do not contain much useful, unique content are the most vulnerable.

Google’s goal in making this algorithmic change was to ensure that higher quality content would show up when people search for long-tail queries.  If you want to determine whether or not your website was affected, take a look at your analytics reports from the end of April through around May 3^rd or 4^th.  Was there a drop in traffic levels or a drop in the number of pages that were getting traffic?  If you noticed the latter, it’s probable that your site was affected.  You can also check your site’s crawl stats to determine if the update did some damage.

What to Do

If you’ve been affected by the Mayday update, there are several changes you can make to regain your site’s rankings and traffic levels.  First of all, you need to ensure that every page of your site contains a sufficient amount of quality, original content.  Also, make sure to do plenty of internal linking with relevant anchor text so your site’s content looks more important in Google’s eyes.  In addition, build quality inbound links to pages of your site that target long-tail terms, so you can boost their authority.

To find out which pages of your site were affected by the Mayday update, take a look at your analytics reports to determine which set of queries has been getting less traffic and then find out which pages are still ranking highly.  What makes the latter pages different?  Think about what you can do to make the pages that are getting less traffic more valuable.  When you work to improve these web pages by sprucing up their content and boosting their relevancy, you’ll find that your website visitors are also more engaged with your content and more likely to convert to customers.

Google’s Official Take on the Mayday Update

Matt Cutts of Google posted a YouTube video about the Mayday update here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM.  The video explains very clearly what the update is for and what website owners can do to recoup their losses.  Matt recommends adding great content, boosting your website’s authority, and making sure that your content for each particular query is highly useful and relevant to website visitors.  Basically, as long as you continue to focus on providing high quality content and following SEO best practices, you’re on the right track.