Google 2006 and Jagger's Aftermath
Author: Jason OConnor


Starting this past fall (2005) Google launched a major
update to their search algorithm which shook up the search
engine optimization (SEO) community and millions of website
rankings. The update has been named Jagger and is
apparently finished.

The keywords that people used to find your site with in
Google may not be producing as many visits any more because
the Jagger changes caused your rankings to plummet. Of
course many people have seen their rankings stay the same
or improve in Jagger's aftermath too.

If your site's rankings have decreased, what can be done to
get back to where you were or better in the post-Jagger
Google world?

There are still a lot of questions to be sure, but there
are some good beginnings of answers as well. Since this
update was rolled out over months and in three distinct
phases, it has been much more difficult to determine what
factors have been given more weight or less.

For instance, IBL (inbound links to your site) have always
been important to achieve high rankings in Google. But
there are many different kinds of IBL's. Link trades, where
you put my link on your site and I put your link on my site
may be less valuable than a one-way link.

This has been the case for a while, but is the importance
of each changed now since Jagger? Probably. I don't know
all the answers, and I don't think anyone knows all the
answers save the people at the 'plex (short for
Google-plex).

What are some theories? Here are some of the top ones, but
I am not saying they are necessarily true or false. And
this is not a full list, there are most likely numerous
other factors that affect Google rankings after Jagger that
no one has recognized at all yet.

The following list consists of ideas I have read online,
which I spend hours each day doing, or some of our own
hard-earned observations using the large number of clients'
websites in many different industries to learn from.

Read the following with a grain of salt, which is always a
good idea when reading any articles or forum posts about
SEO or Jagger.

*** Things That Could Possibly HELP You More In Jagger's
Aftermath ***

• Aged Domains - Sites with domains that are older rank
better now - the older the domain, the better its rankings
with all other things being equal. (This is probably true
to some degree).
• Very Relevant Links - IBL (inbound links) and OBL
(outbound links) relevancy is more important after Jagger.
This means that if you point to related sites or you get
links from other sites that are related to your website,
you may rank better after Jagger with all other things
being equal. (This is probably true to some degree as
well).
• Links From Trusted Sites Help - TrustRank (or a similar
concept) is more important than ever after Jagger.
TrustRank is a concept that says if you get a link pointing
to your site that is highly trusted by Google (trusted
either programmatically or by human editors), then you will
rank better with all other things being equal. (See
http://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF).
• Variety of Links - Links from .edu and .org websites are
good for increasing your rankings and are more important
than ever. (It's vital to get links form a wide variety of
websites. Just like your investing, you need to diversify
your IBL's. (This has probably been true even before
Jagger).
• Aged Links - The older the link that points to your site,
the more weight it's given now. (This also has probably
been true even before Jagger).
• Embedded Links - Links that are embedded in sentences and
paragraphs instead of stand-alone links are weighted more
heavily now. (This may be true soon if not already).
• Article Links - Articles are what directories had been a
year or two ago for link building. Links from the author
by-line or within the article that point back to your site
will positively affect your rankings.
• Fresh & Unique Content - Now, more than ever, regularly
updated and added ordinal content will help your rankings.
(This is almost definitely true.)
• Be a Big Guy - If you are a big behemoth site like
Wikipedia, Yahoo, AOL, Ebay, Amazon, etc., you will rank
better than you did before Jagger.
• High Traffic & Stickiness - User popularity statistics
now, or will soon, affect rankings. In other words, user
actions on your website, like how long they stay
(stickiness), how many pages they visit, and even how many
people visit your site in a given period, can all affect
how Google ranks your site. (This may be true soon if not
already).

*** Things That Could Possibly Not Help You Anymore, or May
Even HURT You More In Jagger's Aftermath ***

• Duplicate Content - Any kind of duplicate content can
hurt your rankings. Some say this only refers to other
sites having the same content as you while others say even
duplicate content within your own site can be bad. I find
the latter hard to believe since all sites have repeating
slogans, phrases, checkout instructions, or any number of
other duplicate sentences within the same site. (Use
http://www.copyscape.com/ to find people who are stealing
your original written content and publishing it on their
site).
•Hidden Text - Hidden text within your html, in div tags,
CSS, or comments, can negatively affect your rankings.
(This is something you should never do).
• Footer Links – Some say links in the footer are
disregarded now. (This is one we have found no evidence
for).
• Directory Links - Links from directories are weighted
less now. (This is one we have found no evidence for, but
is most likely true or will be soon)
• Decreased Rate of Link Building - The speed and volume of
inbound link creation to your site from other websites, if
changed, can negatively affect your rankings more so now.
(This one is most likely true too).
• Reciprocal Links - Reciprocal link trades are worth less
then they were before or are worth nothing now. (It's
probably true that they are at least worth less now).
• Linking to Bad Neighborhoods - Reciprocal link trades
hurt your rankings when you link to sites that are
considered 'bad neighborhoods' by Google, such as link
farms or sites that are banned by Google. (This is most
likely true and has been for a while).
• Link Schemes - Participating in link schemes such as
Co-ops or Link Vault can hurt your ranking more than help
them. (I have not found any evidence of this so far for my
client's sites, but this could be true).

Again, I don't think anyone outside Google knows which of
these factors above are true or false, and how each one
affects a given keyword phrase's ranking. In fact, that's
the idea. Google doesn't want people 'gaming' their system.
There are so many variables that need to be considered that
it is very difficult to figure out which ones affect what.

*** So, what do you do now if your site's ranking have
dropped since Jagger? ***

If your site was ranking well in the Google SERP's (search
engine ranking position) before Jagger, then it was nowhere
to be found right after Jagger hit, and now your site has
still not bounced back at all, then you probably tripped a
filter, got penalized or even banned.

You may have duplicate content on another site, or someone
copied a lot of your content, or you may have canonical
issue (where yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com are
considered two different sites by Google causing it to look
like duplicate content).

You may have hidden text, or keyword stuffed your pages or
any number of other things. You're definitely going to need
more knowledge than this article can give you to get your
rankings back.

Some say that Google updates have happened before around
the same time of year, and many sites that tanked came back
after the first of the year. I don't know if this is true,
we'll just have to wait and see. For those who have still
not rebounded, this may be nice to know.

Interestingly, most of our clients' sites either stayed the
same or improved after Jagger. Our own company site
improved. But unfortunately, a few of our other clients saw
some decreases in their rankings right after Jagger, and
have since rebounded, but not at quite the same pre-Jagger
levels. Here's what we did for them:

• Scoured their site for bad outgoing links and made sure
that each site they linked to was indexed by Google and was
not trying to game Google. Any questionable links were
deleted immediately. But we did not get rid of all our link
partners, we just culled.
• Determined the ratio of the different types of incoming
links to learn where improvements were needed. In other
words, we determined the percentage of links to their site
that were link trades, one-way links from related sites,
one-ways from unrelated sites, link advertisements,
directory links, forum signature links and more. We then
advised them to increase their one-way related inbound
links that are embedded in sentences, and not concentrate
so much on link trades and stop getting one-way unrelated
link development altogether.
• Cleaned up the HTML on every page, made sure all tags
were closed and that there was no extraneous code on any
page. And we put CSS and JavaScript's in separate files.
• Took out any inadvertent hidden text. One client had
keywords in comment tags in their HTML that we deleted.
• Decreased file size of pages, by taking out old links and
superfluous verbiage, and by re-optimizing the .gif's and
jpg's.
• Wrote much more succinct Meta descriptions and on-page
verbiage.
• Made sure that every title tag on every page within the
site was different.
• Coached them about the importance of continually
developing good, quality, original content.
• Brainstormed ways in which their sites could entice other
webmasters to link to them because of what their site
offers, such as good content, free Web tools, articles and
many other things. This is called natural linking and what
Google regards as the only legitimate way to build links.
Therefore, this is vital.

We tried to look at the overall link development strategy,
the value of their site, and the quality of the site, both
the content quality and the html quality.

A clean, simple, fast-loading site with natural links
pointing to it from a variety of other related websites,
some .org's and .edu's, others from trusted authority
sites, and many from small related websites, that adds
fresh and unique content daily, will rank well in Google
over time and won't be affected by any update, including
Jagger.

The best way for you to learn what to do in Jagger's
aftermath is to read articles like this, participate in
forums that discuss these topics, and most importantly, by
experimenting with your own sites to see what works. This
takes time and patience. So does building quality sites
that have things to offer and that subsequently get natural
links. But it's all worth it.

Jason OConnor is president of Oak Web Works, LLC
http://www.OakWebWorks.com, a full-service Web firm. He
also runs Get Your Tickets
http://www.BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com