And here we go again.... and again... and again... Please don't mind our ramble on.
"Spam updates my ass. There have been many good, quality sites that have no ads or spam in any way that have tanked. " - All In SEO
Another update and yet again small business owners and agencies are being blindsided by Google Search once again. Yes, we know that we should not be talking negatively about Search but it's the most corrupt organization that we have ever seen. We have staff that does SEO locally and then we have Consultants that assist on National and High Traffic locations and there will be many who read this and say we have no clue (Very common for SEO's to knock other SEO's which is sad but just how it is.) but SEO isn't just for those who are self-proclaimed professionals but anyone who is online trying to appeal to the search engines and trying to get their business or client found so that they can grow their businesses online and survive in this economy.
Working in SEO is like being a student in school and being taught something by your teacher and then your teacher giving you a test based on nothing they were taught. Google does whatever it wants and regardless of opinion, the facts are that they only care about money. Looking back, 15 years ago it was you put up a website and do a few page titles and tags and you got to page 1. Then you add some backlinks (blackhat or white) and you would get to the top. Everyone figured it out and then humans once again ruined a good thing because they figured out a way to get paid. Making money obviously runs the world. Over the years Google has grown and while they have grown they have truly lost its way. They decided to monetize everything that they could. Their PPC program has grown hand over fist and while they bathe in all of our money they continue to get hungrier to feed the beast while not giving a shit about the people who made them what they are. They now continue to destroy small business day after day without showing an ounce of gratitude. Fast track to 2022 and between their search division and their GMB (Google My Business) division which are the only 2 divisions that are still free, they are just rocking small business owners once again with yet another secretive rollout of another change to their algorithm without ever thinking about working with small business owners (not agencies) but the actual small business owners who depend on their platform for leads to keep their business open and alive.
You would think that they would create a platform to work with these small business owners to help them abide by their ever-changing game rules. That's all this feels like, one big game to get everyone off the only 2 free paths left. Between their search "update" rollouts which happen over a few day period and their changes to GMB. Business owners who were on top of their pick 3 by getting reviews and following their rules are being suspended by the minute and it's just sad to watch what is happening without any concern for our small business owners or consequence.
While we understand some aspects of their changes and attempt for improvements (If you believe that) we also see that they are going downhill. Just do a Google search and watch all the BS that you find, we can see for ourselves that the quality of their results has seriously gone downhill which is why other search engines are actually growing and at the same time abandoning Chrome. Nobody trusts Google. Again, we see why they are trying to improve search but their process is horrible. More and more you hear Google saying we want quality content for our readers and if you do these things you will get the SEO results that you deserve! Yet you still see them ranking exact match domains loaded with keywords or the site that is from 1996 because of its age we have found in our research.
If we were working for search we would create a program that small business owners who know nothing about SEO (but need Google for the leads) and the head of search to simplify it for business owners while Search tells them what to do and actually stand by it. Just seems like a battle that can't be won and it's sad to see what is about to happen to our small business owners once again. This is why we have begun working with a client who wants to create free leads for business owners, so they aren't so dependent on tech giants who don't care about them. Rant Over, this probably will never be seen because currently, the talk about new links being indexed seems to be in major delay.
