By: Fabiola Grosshan
Submitted: 2010-06-29 02:44:40 | Word Count: 531
As a San Diego web development company, as well as a San Diego web design company my search traffic dropped about 15% in May. I was wondering what happened and whether I had done something wrong. I later found out that Google had changed their algorithm which ultimately effects long tail keyword search.
I wanted to share this information with you and let you know how Google has changed its algorithm and how it now impacts long tail search. Basically, the new algorithm does not change the way that Google ranks the pages in its index but the way it assesses them. Over the last few years we have been witnesses to a number of changes but none so severe, and this is why it is important that all the webmasters out there become educated on the new rules that have to be followed in order to create success for a website.
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Just like in the case of the old algorithm we do not have access to specific information and we cannot draw any definitive conclusions as to what are the most important factors but the ones that we are aware of are still very much used. If you do not have any experience with search engine optimization and more specifically getting a site to the first page of Google and maintaining your position, then here are the basics.
The most relevant elements contained in Google’s algorithm are keyword density, domain age and authority, incoming links, and the quality score which in turn relies on a variety of factors such as bounce rate, direct visitors and referred visitors, and so on.
Keyword density is often times discarded as not being all that important by most new webmasters. This is obviously a grave mistake which can negatively impact the success of a website in the future. Keyword density must be taken into account when you are working on various features of the site, ranging from title tags and meta tags, headers, any internal linking, and very importantly content.
It obviously takes time to build domain age and authority but these two attributes have been proven invaluable to anyone interested in creating a successful online company. For anyone that does not really grasp the subject of authority, the answer is very simple. Website authority basically refers to the level of trust your website has with internet users, and is supposedly measured in the number of returning visitors and the rate by which the number of visitors grows in certain periods of time.
The same thing applies to Google. Before, their servers and their algorithm did not manage to understand long tail keywords so they had to take a wild guess, But now that they added more servers and more technology they can understand the whole sentence and there for can produce a better result.
If you are a web design company and you experienced a drop in the rank, make sure you optimize your site for long tail keywords.
