Was Your Google Search Rank Affected by the "Mayday" Change

Google makes over 400 search ranking changes each year to the "algorithm" used to rank websites.  

Last month Google made a search algorithm change that was substantial enough to have earned the code name "Mayday."  According to Google guru Matt Cutts, this change impacts "long tail" searches which are longer search queries with numerous (i.e four or more) words in the search query.  Matt Cutts posted a YouTube video about the Mayday change May 30th.

The Mayday change will likely affect the search ranking of larger sites with "item" or other "focused topic" pages.  These types of pages often don't get the specific SEO treatment as the pages that target shorter search queries of 2-3 search terms.

Was your site affected by Mayday?  What should a web business owner do? 

First thing I recommend is evaluating your website's and your competitors website's ranking for a sampling of your long tail search terms.   This is so we can determine the SEO qualities of the website pages that are ranking well for your long tail keywords.

Once you have some understanding of the SEO characteristics of the pages that are ranking well, you want to do some brainstorming around how you can make your website more relevant and valuable to your long tail searching prospects.

Some ideas for adding relevant content and increasing value are: product reviews, testimonials, detailed specifics about an item, product or topic, and of course my favorite SEO tactic - create quality blog articles and social media chatter that target the long tail search terms.

The good news is that by adding more relevant and valuable content to your site, you should increase customer engagement and conversion too, which hopefully leads to increased revenue for your web business. 

Bottom line: Google is constantly changing its algorithm for ranking websites in the search engine results pages.   This is why web business owners should not focus on just one or two specific types of search engine optimization (SEO), but should focus on improving the overall value of the website by continuously adding relevant, useful content to their websites.

Source Search Engine Land - http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054

YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM