SEO specialists the world over have been fearfully anticipating the arrival of Google Zebra;
a radical algorithm that’ll be used to rank search engine results much like previous updates in the form of Google Panda and Penguin.
Google continues its policy of naming these algorithms after black and white animals;
which symbolizes two SEO strategies; Black-Hat and White-Hat.
The Zebra update is not yet official;
but SEO specialists are worried that if made operational it would make much of the regular SEO strategies obsolete.
The previous updates have been known to affect a great number of websites in the Google search rankings,
so much so that webmasters have been forced to bring changes in their content
so it will pass the search algorithms strict selection criterion.
How Zebra Impacts Content Strategy:
Google Zebra will have a measurable impact on all content strategies because it will most likely target social media.
Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have seen a huge surge in popularity during the last few years and as a consequence;
many marketing specialists choose to run their campaigns online since it generates public interest and also saves up on conventional advertising expenses.
It is much easier to create a public page on Facebook that will then be followed by users. The Google Zebra will closely monitor such websites for suspicious activity.
These activities include spamming, creation of fake accounts and user profiles that give the illusion that the particular page is highly active and popular; such apparent public interest will draw in real users.
How is Zebra different from Penguin and Panda?
Google Zebra is different from previous algorithm versions like the Penguin and Panda in the way that it targets social media websites in particular.
The Google Panda and Penguin on the other hand, were concerned more about the typical websites that show up in search results.
The Panda ranked websites on the basis of their usefulness, users were asked to rank websites on the basis of their effectiveness, speed and relevancy of content.
The Panda algorithm would then learn this ranking approach and apply it to rank other similar websites.
Google Penguin monitors the content directly;
it looks for any breaches in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines that offer warning against black-hat search engine optimization methods like cloaking, duplication and keyword stuffing.
Google Zebra on the other hand, targets social media.
Why Google had to do this:
Google has a reputation to keep, and in order to give its users the best search experience, it aims to re-arrange the world’s information in a way so as to rank the most relevant and high quality results on the top.
Google understands the methods in which webmasters manipulate their content to meet SEO requirement and rank high in search results.
Methods like keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc meant that these sites would show up in search results but wouldn’t contain a lot of useful information.
Google plans to use the Zebra to retaliate and raise the bar a notch higher.
The article is written by Uzma Parveen who loves to share hosting related secretes.
She recommends Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Servers for a large website. Their prices are great and quality is excellent.