Would A Google Algorithm Change Affect Your Rankings?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

It happens every couple of years or so. Google will undergo a huge algorithm change that seriously affects some rankings. Sometimes those algorithm changes affect the search engine optimization strategies at a large number of websites – sometimes they affect a wide variety of different types of websites – and sometimes they only affect a few websites of a certain type. But you can bet that Google will drastically change its algorithms again at some point in the future. When it does, will that change affect your site in a negative way?

Search engines are unpredictable. In one sense. You don’t know what they’ll do next. But they are very predictable in that you know they’ll do something.

Google will likely make a large and serious algorithm change some time within the next two or three years. When it does there will be a lot of sites that fall in the rankings. Will yours be one of them? How can you prevent it?

The best way to prevent a huge fall or decline in rankings due to a search engine algorithm change is to not rely on any one method of SEO or online marketing too much. In other words, don’t put all your hopes on one link building strategy. Diversity is really the best defense you have against out-of-the-blue search engine algorithm changes.

And most of all I always recommend following Google’s Webmaster and optimization guidelines at the following links:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291

The important things to understand is that the Google algorithm might change over time but the basics won’t!