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Ahh the good old days.  The days when a ‘Google Dance’ didn’t equate to a social event at the most recent search engine strategies conference.

Those were the days when webmasters literally lost sleep over the most recent Google update.  In this article we look at the current Google update to determine if the sky is indeed falling.  Are we back to the “Dance” Days?

It used to be that you could browse a forum like Webmasterworld and see all kinds of speculation as to what the current Google update was targeting.

"I noticed that my site dropped after adding a few new links, so they must be targeting new links."

It was this kind of speculation that was driving much of the uproar that became known as “the Google Dance.”

The Google Dance was the one time of the month, usually starting the last few days of the month and stretching into the first few days of the next month, when Google would do a regular overhaul of the index.  During that week or two it would be common to see sites move hundreds or places in the result over night, only to return to their original position just a few days later. 

And as I mentioned, the different site owner and webmaster forums were rife with speculation.  And while most speculation was so far off base, there was some truth to what true researchers were finding.

But then the now infamous “Florida Update” happened and Google changed the rules.  Not only was there a significant shift in the index, but the monthly Google Dance’s became less and less frequent.

Within a few months, the dance was over and the chairs were put away.  This is because Google moved to a continuously updating index, and this is the index you see today.  One that is updated incrementally many times per week.

Sure, you don’t notice too many changes, but I’ve found that the index updates at least twice per week – once on the weekend and once mid-week, usually during the wee hours of Thursday morning.

Occasionally you will find that Google attempts a fairly major update – not as major as “the dance” used to be, but because you normally don’t notice the incremental updates, they seem major by comparison.

And that is what is occurring right now, as I type this – one of those not-so-major, major updates.

Now, from what I can gather from the clients I deal with on a regular basis is that this is just a PageRank update followed by a minor shift in rankings due to the PageRank change.

This stems back to a backlink update which occurred in the past few weeks ago (which followed a fairly major index increase that Google undertook as a response to Yahoo!s claim that their index was the biggest).

So, in order we saw a Yahoo! Claim, then a Google crawl and update, followed by a backlink update, and now a PageRank update.

Remember, we likely won’t see the results of the new PageRank values in the Toolbar for some time yet, but based on the results I’m seeing, this is the most logical explanation.

So, what do you do to weather these storms?

It really comes down to what some consider “ethical” search engine optimization practices.  That means, staying away from over-optimizing your pages, link farms, heavy reciprocal linking, over use of single phrase linking and so on.  If you are familiar with any of the top search engine forums, this is a common theme.

And don’t forget, that while this is a relatively major update (in that it’s not the typical ongoing update we normally see) it’s still to be expected.  Also, while your rankings may suffer in the short term, as long as you haven’t taken part in the tactics I’ve mentioned above then you should recover and even improve in some cases.

For example, lets review some common misconceptions about link building:

The more links you have the better

While this is partly true, it isn’t entirely true.  While it is better to have a high volume of incoming links, it is of utmost importance that these links be relevant and related to your site.  That means the links are from similar sites, or sites that offer related products or services such as directories, or even from pages on other sites which, while the site may not be entirely “the same” the content on the page is highly relevant to your site.

You should focus your link building efforts on one main key phrase

Also not true.  This is one of the first things a search engine looks at – the anchor text of your links.  If the text on all the links is the same, chances are your site will be flagged for manual review and could get penalized or even removed from the index.  The best way to combat this is how Textlinkbrokers does it – by randomizing the link text, site descriptions and so on.  That way the increase in link counts seems more natural because there are more, different, links coming to your site.

Really, you want your linking to appear natural.  That means providing select links that you think your site visitors might be interested in.  For example, if you sell a product, then link to the manufacturers specifications for that item.

Similarly, your inbound links should work the same way.  Try to build links from related sites, or sites with related content.  If you sell a product, try and get a link from the site that sells accessories to your product.  In this case, a reciprocal link could help.  Because you are boosting their link popularity, they may be more willing to link back to you.

Be wary of reciprocal linking, however.  Be sure they are similar to the one I described above.  Your reciprocal link must add value to your customers browsing experience.  If it doesn’t then stay away from the link

Summary - Should you be worried?

In conclusion, let me say that if you’ve kept your optimization efforts above board, then you will weather this storm.  Your site may have a few more bumps and bruises but it will recover.  And if you’ve been proactive with your SEO and are doing everything right chances are you will come out ahead when the index settles down again.

Just remember that for as long as we rely on search engines there will be many more major and minor updates to come.  The sooner you realize this, and realize that there may be some short term flux, the better you will sleep at night because while we can influence search engines to a degree, that’s all it is – influence.

It is only the search engines who know what works and what doesn’t.  However you can rest assured that if you follow the advice of an SEO consultant (whether it’s one you’ve hired or one you’ve gotten to answer your questions on a reputable forum) you will come out ok.