Have you heard of the Google Penguin update?
The recent Google algorithm update which has potential to wreck website rankings.
To the layperson who has limited or no exposure to search engine optimisation and how Google works, this may sound both a little bizarre and perhaps quite worrying too. What has a “penguin” got to do with a dentist’s website search ranking and how can it be so bad as to wreck my Google positions?
These are two very valid questions, and with the latest iteration of the Google Penguin update just released (the last was well over a year ago), we thought it worthwhile to quickly recap on perhaps one of the most significant elements of Google search algorithm and the way it works to determine how your website fares in the ranking results.
What is the Penguin update and how does it work?
Firstly it’s perhaps important to explain that the Penguin update is not new. It was first introduced back in April 2012 and the effects of that are covered elsewhere in this blog. In a nutshell, it was introduced as an anti-spam measure, particularly to seek out those websites which had been using manipulative techniques such as mass link-building and exact-match anchor text to boost their Google positions. As we’ve covered previously, many dentists’ websites were hit really hard and pushed way back in the ranking results – quite a big blow to business for many of them.
The update has been run a few times since 2012 and more refined in the way it acts; but each time more websites which have been using promotional techniques outside of Google’s guidelines, have been caught out and penalised.
Before we move on the discuss how your own website may be at risk, it’s also worth noting that the Penguin updates to-date, have not been part of the core Google algorithm; more an add-on filter which is periodically invoked specifically to weed out offenders. However, it was announced that with the new update, that Penguin will actually become part of the core and run in real time.
Is your own website at risk?
If you’ve done any research into search engine optimisation for your dental practice, you may have come across the phrase “vanity SEO” or more specifically “vanity keywords”.
A new SEO client recently called us to query the prices for our service following a conversation he’d just had with the provider of payment services at his dental practice.
We were recently contacted by a potential new client whose dental practice website had been built for him using an online web builder called “Squarespace”. He had purchased some business cards on a budget from a new dental web marketing company who also offered to build his website; an offer he took up as it appeared to be a good price – at least on face value.
The need (or not) for SEO to promote a new website is quite a hot topic in the dental marketing world and worthy of further explanation to help ensure that dentists who are embarking on new website builds, don’t get misinformed.
We’ve previously discussed how AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising system, can be beneficial for dentists who have a new website which doesn’t yet have prominent free ranking results and hence very limited traffic.
The increased level of competition in dentistry has resulted in a proliferation of new dental marketing providers; all vying to grab a piece of the action and your budget too. Along with the raft of new providers, the long-established marketing teams have also introduced numerous ways to try to differentiate their services; some of it useful but unfortunately a lot of it just the same old methodology wrapped up in a new guise and often with a hefty price tag to boot.
Do you ever wonder why lots of new dental websites all look very similar? Perhaps you recently commissioned a new site but were perturbed to see “Dazzling Whites Smiles” just down the road publish something very similar just a few weeks later? You’re not alone.
One feature of a website which is accepted to affect search engine optimisation is “freshness” i.e. the age of the content. This doesn’t mean that all new content will rank better than old content – there is much more to it than that of course. Indeed Google has advised that older pages which are still popular and engaging for users, can continue to rank just as well as new content which is of a similar quality.