Is Google SEO Dead? Depends On Your Hat Color

The announcement of the latest Google algorithm change has created widespread panic in the SEO community.

Matt Cutts has publicly stated that the Google Search Quality Team makes > 500 changes every year. Keeping up is impossible. However, the latest change has SEO ears standing up.

The recent deindexing of buildmyrank.com, the popular blog network and Matt Cutts’ talk on the ‘over optimization algorithm change’ SHOULD be of concern, to some SEOers.

Google has described the change as a step to ‘level the SEO playing field’ opening opportunities for white hat SEO to be just as effective as black hat SEO, as it should be!

It has raised a lot of questions about the value / future of SEO efforts. Basically, what is going to hurt your rankings and what is taking your SEO efforts too far?

Mr Cutts explains what Google’s intentions are regarding the latest update -

“Absolutely there are some people who take it too far. What we’re mindful of is when someone says, “We’re White Hat. We continue to do the right thing, and we see the Black Hats who are over optimizing or going too far, and they seem to be doing too well.” So we’ve been working on changes to try to make sure that if you are a White Hat or if you’ve been doing very little SEO that you are going to not be affected by this change. But if you’ve been going way far beyond the pale, then that’s the sort of thing where your site might not rank as highly as it did before.”

Should you be concerned? Maybe. How closely alligned with Google’s SEO Guidelines are your SEO efforts?

CJM

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