Did the latest round of Google Updates effect your website?

If you have been effected, your not alone.  In an attempt to discourage the use of 'Black Hat' SEO techniques (ie buying back-links, keyword stuffing, spam sites and scraped sites  etc) Google has been running out a series of changes since the beginning of 2011.  Unfortunately, many small business' who had employed the services of a (Black Hat)  SEO company have found themselves the victims of this latest round of changes.

The truth is, you (or we as Search Engine Optimizers) never know what Google is planning next.  What might be a good SEO trick now could lead to penalties in a years time.

The only certainty to a good Google rank is to:

• Be authentic in your content.  Post relevent and useful content.
• Post regually.  Google gives higher weighting to sites that update their content on a regular basis.
• Use basic SEO tags and set up your pages with SEO in mind.
• Share your content via Social Media.
• Link to useful content elsewhere on the internet.  Google gives a higher weighting to sites that link well within their site and to the rest of the internet.
• Be smart.  If a company makes it sound TOO EASY to get on the front page of Google, then it is too good to be true.  Remember, slow and steady wins the race.