So, Google has finally got around to releasing the Farmer Update for all English language queries. Or, as many site owners would like to think of it, the Sword of Damocles has finally fallen, but don’t bother scanning the horizon for the four horsemen – things aren’t as bad as they seem.
After so many queries were affected in the US – almost 12% – it seemed like Google’s Farmer Update was the end for a lot of SEO plans. Although the Farmer looked a lot like another farm implement-wielding figure, one more commonly seen in a long black robe, a little calm consideration will show that this is not so.
The main effect the update had on US pages was to weed out pages with bad content. As all those working in SEO can tell you, content is the cornerstone of modern SEO. If you’re following your search engine optimisation consultant’s advice, or even just keeping up with the techniques advised in the main blogs, you’ll have lots of fresh, unique content on your pages.
The problems creep in only when content is duplicated. Sometimes, this isn’t your fault. Scrapers may have stolen your content, and this could result in a rankings dive after the update. If this is the case, though, the best thing you can do is track down your scraped content and work at getting this removed. For many websites though, this won’t be the case at all and many will need to re-examine their site’s content.
So, get to work on your site’s content. It’s not the End of Days; it’s just another Google update and with a quality SEO and content strategy, you can overcome it.
- How to surf the rising tide of content marketing - June 5, 2018
- Money saving tips for content marketing - May 16, 2018
- Is your content readable enough? - March 21, 2018
