Be careful of reading too much into search engine algos

Whenever a search engine (Google in particular) makes a change to how they rank web pages, speculation tends to run rampant. I think this practice is very dangerous. Why? Because you’re not privy to the actual thought process that made the decision. Search engines are third parties, unrelated to you, and with very different agendas. Keep this in mind when attempting to analyse their efforts.

The whole problem with guessing at changes at this: the index of search engines has grown very large. When you keep in mind that billions of pages are affected in updates, you’re looking at a very, very small piece of the picture by looking at your own site. Even if you and other SEO buddies end up looking at 10 or even 20 samples, it’s much too small to make any meaningful guesses.

The best thing to do, is to continue to build your website for readers. If you lose traffic, then it’s particularly important to get to work. It is amazing how often you hear someone say they have to “lay off staff” or something similar when SERPs drop. This is ridiculous, because SERPS can drop anytime, and you have to be prepared for it. If your entire business is still soley reliant on search engine traffic, you’re setting yourself up for an inevitable fall.

Make sure your website doesn’t have any technical errors that would cause a drop. If you don’t, then your job is done, and you need to go to work on the million other methods you can use to promote your website.