“My site has been at the top of Google SERPS for very competitive phrases. It’s a high quality site offering hundreds of pages of original content. Then, overnight, my site hit the bottom for almost everything thanks to Jagger.”
Back in 2005, it was one of the numerous forum threads agonizing over Google Jagger Update.
Before Jagger, there was Florida, one of the first biggest Google algorithm changes to resonate deeply with webmasters.
Years later, I have a strong feeling of déjà vu.
Over the last three weeks, the SEO world seems to have gone mad. Panic has filled the web space: naïve and trusting webmasters start removing backlinks, content and keywords to cause nothing than a faster decrease in rankings.
This post is not yet another prescription to fight Penguin.
Rather, it’s a prescription to stop sweating about Penguin, and learn from SEO history, which, as we’ll see, has a tendency to repeat itself.
Here’s a retrospective of most hyped-over Google Updates, each and every one of which was perceived as SEO’s Doomsday.
Google’s philosophy on search results has been pretty much the same from the get-go.
As you see, Google itself is a great example to follow. The team behind the world’s largest search engine is persistently rolling out updates to cut on the websites not in line with its search quality Guidelines – that’s it.
Don’t you feel it’s time to stop shifting the blame from one update to another?
Instead, isn’t it easier to just apply Google’s rules to your own sites? Once your SEO strategy is in line with the Google guidelines, you’ll no longer have to play victim pointing fingers at Pandas and Penguins.
While others are panicking, the wisest thing to do would be to stay cool and get down to your SEO business.
P.S. If you still believe that Pandas and Penguins threaten SEOs, here’s just one case study that proves the opposite, and I guess you can spot many more examples in search results.
Written by Aleh Barysevich
Aleh Barysevich is a Marketing Director and Co-Founder of Link-Assistant.Com, the company that makes SEO PowerSuite website promotion toolkit for bloggers, webmasters and online marketers.
