Google
Darwinism

Google's frequent Penguin, Panda and other algorithm updates are never feared by legitimate and experienced SEO companies. Google has simply punished websites with undeserved rankings that are often the result of questionable optimization techniques, not from legitimate techniques performed by a professional SEO service.

As Google has mentioned in the past, its regular algorithm updates never intend on penalizing the websites that provide a positive user experience, publish high quality and well-written content, and that avoid using shady SEO services.

"Google's algorithm updates have resulted in an evolutionary online ranking process - the strongest websites always survive, and many earn ranking boosts."

Google's algorithm updates have resulted in an evolutionary online ranking process - in that the strongest websites in terms of content, legitimate backlinks, and optimization techniques always end up surviving each algorithm update, with many of them getting ranking boosts.

Algorithm Updates Have Punished Low Quality Content and Backlinks

Because Google's recent algorithms were updated over the past several years to punish websites with poor content and low quality backlinks, some claimed that SEO no longer works. That couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is that black and grey hat SEO doesn't work and it never has, while the tried and tested method of publishing great content still works better than ever.

Google's recent Penguin, Panda and mobile-friendly updates and other subtler algorithm updates have continued to reward websites that release high quality content that is genuinely useful to their visitors and minimally optimized.

Most Recent Penalties Had to Do With Over-Optimization

Many of the past several penalties and algorithm updates had to do with over-optimization, or putting too many keywords in a particular article or webpage. With Google's algorithm constantly becoming more and more advanced, it is able to spot even minimal instances of over-optimization and almost immediately lower rankings appropriately.

This first occurred on a large scale during the February 2011 Panda update which heavily penalized websites that keyword stuffed. In a post-Panda and Penguin world, Google is as sensitive as it ever has been to any optimization techniques that neglect to consider the visitor's web experience.

Creating an Amazing Web Experience Is What Matters for SEO

By publishing intriguing content that is frequently updated and ensuring that visitors can easily browse a website on their computer or mobile device, webmasters and SEO companies can establish their websites as industry leaders and stand out from the competition.

"Google rewards the webmasters who take the extra effort to first ensure that their content matters to their readers, and then as a second priority ensure that content is optimized with best practices."

The latest algorithms incorporate an increasing number of factors that take into account a web visitor's experience. Content quality, site speed, mobile usability, and navigation clarity are all signals that feed into how Google ranks a page.

Websites With Frequent Content Issues Fall Off Faster Than Ever

You can trust that any website that has major content issues and frequent complaints won't last long on Google. Websites with poor content are penalized with reduced rankings faster than ever, and it can be challenging to recuperate them without dramatically shifting SEO and content strategies.

Mobile friendliness is the latest area that Google has focused on, partially due to the vast number of mobile website users throughout the world. Websites that have spam, popups, low quality content, slow loading speeds, or other issues with their mobile website versions are being increasingly penalized.

As a result, the optimization performed by SEO companies has become much more complex and encompasses just about everything that a business does in terms of online marketing.