As an internet business owner, one thing you have to do, if you want your business to be found in the search engines, Google in particular, is stay abreast of changes to search engine algorithms as best as you can.

Google’s Changing Things Up Again

Google recently announced a major change to its algorithm that, according to their blog, may affect as much as 12 percent of sites on the web. This change will target sites Google regards as providing low value due to poor content or duplicate content or simply because they just aren’t very useful. And those sites will end up having their rankings lowered, so this is potentially very damaging when it comes to a site’s position in the search engine results.

As with all changes to Google’s algorithm, ignore this at your own peril!

Give Google What Google Wants

If your site is made up of quality, informative content that provides value to your visitors, you won’t have to worry about losing your rankings. That worn out old epithet that you may be tired of hearing that says “Content is king” looks like it may be truer than ever going forward.

The sites that will probably be in serious trouble are such as the ones known as content farms. These sites are more concerned with quantity rather than quality and up until now they’ve profited from the volume of content they contain, resulting in a lot of poor quality content littering the search engine results.

And, as long as Google is upping the ante in the content stakes, you can guarantee the other search engines such as Yahoo and Bing won’t just sit around and watch the quality of their results sink compared to Google’s. So, watch for similar changes to be announced by the other search engines before too long.

Quality Content More Important Than Ever

What’s obvious here is that quality is going to rule supreme from now on, with quantity taking a back seat, but that seat will be waaaaaaayyy back compared to content.

Bloggers beware! Posts need to offer something new or at least a new twist on something that may already be familiar – just re-publishing a story or news item won’t cut it going forward. The emphasis for Google needs to be on quality, original content, meaning that you need to be saying something new, or risk losing out in the rankings.

Overall, this should be a change that’s a win-win for everybody – those seeking good, original content and those producing it.

What This Means For Your Internet Business

The first thing you should do (and this is something you should already be doing as part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy) is keep a sharp eye on your analytics to make sure your traffic numbers haven’t been adversely affected.

One thing to bear in mind is that search isn’t the only way to get traffic. Now’s the time to boost your social network presence; if you have an e-mail list, begin to interact with them more and work at expanding your list, or if you have newsletter subscribers, the same advice applies. In other words, increase your user base.

Work at increasing the number of inbound links by soliciting links from sites with quality content using anchor text that is keyword-rich. Quality inbound links are still an important factor as far as search engine rankings are concerned.

Vary your content by adding videos on YouTube, post photos on such sites as Flickr and create podcasts. The search engines love variety.

You may also want to look into hiring a good writer to produce quality content for you. Excellent content will help attract links and improve the overall value of your site in Google’s virtual eyes.

As you may gather, internet business owners need to evaluate the content of their sites and, if necessary, consider the above steps to make their rankings more secure.

A UK internet business coach will work with you to ensure your content is of the highest calibre and that your search engine rankings aren’t adversely affected.

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