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Google And Jagger's Aftermath
By Jason Oconnor, Tue Dec 27th
Copyright 2005 Jason OConnor Starting this past 2005 fall Google launched a major update totheir search algorithm which shook up the search engineoptimization (SEO) community and millions of website rankings.The update has been named Jagger and is apparently finished. The keywords that people used to find your site with in Googlemay not be producing as many visits any more because the Jaggerchanges caused your rankings to plummet. Of course many peoplehave seen their rankings stay the same or improve in Jagger'saftermath too.
If your site's rankings have decreased, what can be done to getback to where you were or better in the post-Jagger Google world? There are still a lot of questions to be sure, but there aresome good beginnings of answers as well. Since this update wasrolled out over months and in three distinct phases, it has beenmuch more difficult to determine what factors have been givenmore weight or less. For instance, IBL (inbound links to your site) have always beenimportant to achieve high rankings in Google. But there are manydifferent kinds of IBL's. Link trades, where you put my link onyour site and I put your link on my site may be less valuablethan a one-way link. This has been the case for a while, but isthe importance of each changed now since Jagger? Probably. Idon't know all the answers, and I don't think anyone knows allthe answers save the people at the 'plex (short for Google-plex). What are some theories? Here are some of the top ones, but I amnot saying they are necessarily true or false. And this is not afull list, there are most likely numerous other factors thataffect Google rankings after Jagger that no one has recognizedat all yet. The following list consists of ideas I have readonline, which I spend hours each day doing, or some of our ownhard-earned observations using the large number of clients'websites in many different industries to learn from. Read thefollowing with a grain of salt, which is always a good idea whenreading any articles or posts about SEO or Jagger. Things That Could Possibly HELP You More In Jagger'sAftermath * Aged Domains - Sites with domains that are older rank betternow - the older the domain, the better its rankings with allother things being equal. (This is probably true to some degree). * Very Relevant Links - IBL (inbound links) and OBL (outboundlinks) relevancy is more important after Jagger. This means thatif you point to related sites or you get links from other sitesthat are related to your website, you may rank better afterJagger with all other things being equal. (This is probably trueto some degree as well). * Links From Trusted Sites Help - TrustRank (or a similarconcept) is more important than ever after Jagger. TrustRank isa concept that says if you get a link pointing to your site thatis highly trusted by Google (trusted either programmatically orby human editors), then you will rank better with all otherthings being equal. (Seehttp://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF). * Variety of Links - Links from .edu and .org websites are goodfor increasing your rankings and are more important than ever.(It's vital to get links form a wide variety of websites. Justlike your investing, you need to diversify your IBL's. (This hasprobably been true even before Jagger). * Aged Links - The older the link that points to your site, themore weight it's given now. (This also has probably been trueeven before Jagger). * Embedded Links - Links that are embedded in sentences andparagraphs instead of stand-alone links are weighted moreheavily now. (This may be true soon if not already). * Article Links - Articles are what directories had been a yearor two ago for link building. Links from the author by-line orwithin the article that point back to your site will positivelyaffect your rankings. (And this is one reason I've chosen towrite this article). * Fresh & Unique Content - Now, more than ever, regularlyupdated and added ordinal content will help your rankings. (Thisis almost definitely true.) * Be a Big Guy - If you are a big behemoth site like Wikipedia,Yahoo, AOL, Ebay, Amazon, etc., you will rank better than youdid before Jagger. * High Traffic & Stickiness - User popularity statistics now, orwill soon, affect rankings. In other words, user actions on yourwebsite, like how long they stay (stickiness), how many pagesthey visit, and even how many people visit your site in a givenperiod, can all affect how Google ranks your site. (This may betrue soon if not already). Things That Could Possibly Not Help You Anymore, or May EvenHURT You More In Jagger's Aftermath * Duplicate Content - Any kind of duplicate content can hurtyour rankings. Some say this only refers to other sites havingthe same content as you while others say even duplicate contentwithin your own site can be bad. I find the latter hard tobelieve since all sites have repeating slogans, phrases,checkout instructions, or any number of other duplicatesentences within the same site. (Use http://www.copyscape.com/to find people who are stealing your original written contentand publishing it on their site). * Hidden Text - Hidden text within your html, in tags,CSS, or comments, can negatively affect your rankings. (This issomething you should never do). * Footer Links - Some say links in the footer are disregardednow. (This is one we have found no evidence for). * Directory Links - Links from directories are weighted lessnow. (This is one we have found no evidence for, but is mostlikely true or will be soon). * Decreased Rate of Link Building - The speed and volume ofinbound link creation to your site from other websites, ifchanged, can negatively affect your rankings more so now. (Thisone is most likely true too). * Reciprocal Links - Reciprocal link trades
are worth less thenthey were before or are worth nothing now. (It's probably truethat they are at least worth less now). * Linking to Bad Neighborhoods - Reciprocal link trades hurtyour rankings when you link to sites that are considered 'badneighborhoods' by Google, such as link farms or sites that arebanned by Google. (This is most likely true and has been for awhile). * Link Schemes - Participating in link schemes such as Co-ops orLink Vault can hurt your ranking more than help them. (I havenot found any evidence of this so far for my client's sites, butthis could be true). Again, I don't think anyone outside Google knows which of thesefactors above are true or false, and how each one affects agiven keyword phrase's ranking. In fact, that's the idea. Googledoesn't want people 'gaming' their system. There are so manyvariables that need to be considered that it is very difficultto figure out which ones affect what. So, what do you do now if your site's ranking have droppedsince Jagger? If your site was ranking well in the Google SERP's (searchengine ranking position) before Jagger, then it was nowhere tobe found right after Jagger hit, and now your site has still notbounced back at all, then you probably tripped a filter, gotpenalized or even banned. You may have duplicate content onanother site, or someone copied a lot of your content, or youmay have canonical issue (where yoursite.com andwww.yoursite.com are considered two different sites by Googlecausing it to look like duplicate content). You may have hiddentext, or keyword stuffed your pages or any number of otherthings. You're definitely going to need more knowledge than thisarticle can give you to get your rankings back. Some say that Google updates have happened before around thesame time of year, and many sites that tanked came back afterthe first of the year. I don't know if this is true, we'll justhave to wait and see. For those who have still not rebounded,this may be nice to know. Interestingly, most of our clients' sites either stayed the sameor improved after Jagger. Our own company site improved. Butunfortunately, a few of our other clients saw some decreases intheir rankings right after Jagger, and have since rebounded, butnot at quite the same pre-Jagger levels. Here's what we did forthem: * Scoured their site for bad outgoing links and made sure thateach site they linked to was indexed by Google and was nottrying to game Google. Any questionable links were deletedimmediately. But we did not get rid of all our link partners, wejust culled. * Determined the ratio of the different types of incoming linksto learn where improvements were needed. In other words, wedetermined the percentage of links to their site that were linktrades, one-way links from related sites, one-ways fromunrelated sites, link advertisements, directory links, forumsignature links and more. We then advised them to increase theirone-way related inbound links that are embedded in sentences,and not concentrate so much on link trades and stop gettingone-way unrelated link development altogether. * Cleaned up the HTML on every page, made sure all tags wereclosed and that there was no extraneous code on any page. And weput CSS and JavaScript's in separate files. * Took out any inadvertent hidden text. One client had keywordsin comment tags in their HTML that we deleted. * Decreased file size of pages, by taking out old links andsuperfluous verbiage, and by re-optimizing the .gif's and .jpg's. * Wrote much more succinct Meta descriptions and on-pageverbiage. * Made sure that every title tag on every page within the sitewas different. * Coached them about the importance of continually developinggood, quality, original content. * Brainstormed ways in which their sites could entice otherwebmasters to link to them because of what their site offers,such as good content, free Web tools, articles and many otherthings. This is called natural linking and what Google regardsas the only legitimate way to build links. Therefore, this isvital. We tried to look at the overall link development strategy, thevalue of their site, and the quality of the site, both thecontent quality and the html quality. A clean, simple,fast-loading site with natural links pointing to it from avariety of other related websites, some .org's and .edu's,others from trusted authority sites, and many from small relatedwebsites, that adds fresh and unique content daily, will rankwell in Google over time and won't be affected by any update,including Jagger. The best way for you to learn what to do in Jagger's aftermathis to read articles like this, participate in forums thatdiscuss these topics, and most importantly, by experimentingwith your own sites to see what works. This takes time andpatience. So does building quality sites that have things tooffer and that subsequently get natural links. But it's allworth it.
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About the author:Jason OConnor owns Oak WebWorks, LLC, a full-service Web firm. He also runs A great website toget sports & rock concert tickets, like Red Sox tickets
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