As I keep reading everywhere, with code names such as “May Day” and “Caffeine”, Google has been tweaking their search rank algorithm lately. What does this mean to you and me? Well it means that the types of results being returned will change, as relevance for terms on pages changes. On the flip side, it seems that for web content producers with large sites, with large volumes of “item” (often referred to as ‘Long Tail’) pages will see the rank of those pages, and the traffic driven to them fall.
Why Is the Long Tail Being Affected?
The reality is that sites such as Last.fm or Amazon, with may millions of pages, actually contain a lot of pages with similar or a lot of replicated content, such as lyrics or product specifications, and when results are returned with multiple sites with exactly the same kind of information, this isn’t of much use to the end user. As a result Google is using this set of changes to try and demote the content, in favour of more relevant, but less traveled pages. It’s clear that this update is really aimed at the ‘Big Boys’.
How to Get Around This?
The reality is that if you run a standardised eCommerce site where a lot of pages retain replicated content, you are going to be hit. But this shouldn’t be the end of the world. The only problem is that if you are not receiving a lot of traffic already, you are going to find it an uphill struggle to start achieving the kinds of goals you need to combat the problem in the first place, at which point you might wonder if Google isn’t doing the right thing anyhow.
As with any good SEO, fighting this problem is achieved by creating unique and dynamic content that adds value to the results Google provides and which is of interest to site visitors. If, as I said already, you have a high volume of traffic you can tap into this with comments, reviews and other user generated content, but if you don’t you are not completely stuck. With access to social networks it is much easier to drive traffic to your site this days with a certain immediacy and to try and develop this into something more.
Other means include trying to use more natural search terms on these pages, shaping traffic and relevance for pages on your site by using Sitemap XML files for highlighting lesser and greater importance of pages on the website, as well as robust internal linking with recommendations, and external links with widgets and such like. Beyond this driving traffic to your site through other means, which should have been the case anyhow. It’s clear that this kind of update doesn’t need to be the end of the world for large sites.
SEO is Always About Doing Things Right!
This game plan for combating said changes always comes back to doing things the right way. If you are able to draw focus and concentrate quality on fewer pages than you should. Casting your net as wide as possible, isn’t always the best thing, and when you do, you need to ensure that you are aiming for the highest bar all the time. This isn’t just good for you, but it is implicitly good for your site visitors, and gives Google more reason for sending them there.
Illustration courtesy of Bre Pettis. (CC) on Flickr.
Web-head & art collector, living in East London and huffing on the fumes of the planet since '78. Here are my thoughts.
George - Planet Anarky May 30, 2010
Good article. Worth mentioning the ‘canonical’ tag to help get around duplicate content on-site, though. :)
Vincent Roman May 30, 2010
George. Good point! Thanks for keeping me on my toes, it’s too early on Sunday morning :)
George - Planet Anarky May 30, 2010
In fairness, I’m only this awake at this time on a Bank Holiday Sunday because I forgot to turn my work alarm off. :)