How to seduce a spider: Five SEO rules of seduction in 2012

As 2012 draws to a close, it's increasingly obvious that Google is upping their game in targeting spam websites by tweaking their algorithm to ensure only the most relevant and helpful results are displayed to their users.

Over the past year, we've seen Google make key updates in the name of their quest against webspam:

Search + your world (January 10, 2012)
Google+ social data and user profiles are pushed onto SERPs (search engine results pages).
Ads above the fold (January 19, 2012)
Google devalues sites with too much ad-space above the "fold", an area of prime real estate for web pages.
Venice (February 27, 2012)
This update prioritises local organic search results and more tightly integrates local search data.
Penguin (April 24, 2012)
This update specifically targets webspam, including factors like keyword stuffing, which impacted an estimated 3.1% of English queries.
DMCA Penalty (August 10, 2012)
Sites with repeat copyright violations will be penalised.
Exact Match Domain (EMD) Update (September 27, 2012)
A common SEO tip is to put your keywords in the page URL, but this Google update seeks to put less weight on it.
...not to mention all their tweaks to Panda which was first released February 2011. If you haven't been keeping up, this aims to lower the rank of low-quality or thin content websites.

Here's a simple infographic to outline how you must seduce their spiders:

Embed How to seduce a spider: Five SEO rules of seduction in 2012 on Your Site: Copy and Paste the Code Below

<img src="http://www.g2msolutions.com.au/Portals/62664/images/how%20to%20seduce%20a%20spider%20-%20g2m%20solutions.png" width="540"> <p>How to seduce a spider: Five SEO rules of seduction in 2012 - An infographic by the team at <a href="http://www.g2msolutions.com.au/blog/bid/111090/How-to-seduce-a-spider-Five-SEO-rules-of-seduction-in-2012">g2m solutions</a></p> Embed code generated by SEOgadget

Paige C. Willey

This is great. I didn't realize that some of those updates you mentioned were so specific or had names. I thought they might have just been tweaks in the algorighm, especially the DMCA Penalty.

I will say that I disagree with the infographic a bit. "Don't buy crappy backlinks"-- I think I'd say don't buy any backlinks. There is a good chance that all purchased links will be crappy and Google is getting wise to the sites that sell.

Christabelle

Glad you enjoyed it, Paige. And I totally agree, that should say don't buy backlinks, period. When it comes down to it, buying anything in an attempt to game Google's algorithm will ultimately leave you at a loss... if not now, then it will in future as continuous updates to their algorithm get rolled out. Your safest bet is to focus on your prospects (aka their users') experience. It's not a quick and easy shortcut by any means but it will reap long term benefits - plus, it's ethically sound. Thanks for chiming in!

Charles Hogge

As a copywriter, I'm just waiting for the day that Google finally close all the SEO loopholes. There are few things more frustrating than site owners whose sole content focus seems to be Google's algorithms, ignoring their actual visitors completely. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to explain that yes, you need to appear amongst search results, but all SEO does is get visitors onto your site - once they're there, content has to be built for them, not some spider somewhere, or you'll never make the conversions you want to.

Every step Google take to reward site owners for creating genuinely valuable content is a step in the right direction!

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