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