Google has made some important steps in 2015, among which we can mention the following as the most important development.

Alphabet, diversifying business. This was one of the biggest steps Google has made last year and it was created to make some major changes in the organizational structures in order to make them more organized than they were before. Some may point that Google was getting somehow chaotic due to the many new projects that were starting up and was branching them randomly. We can rate this as the biggest and most efficient updates that have come from the search giant in 2015.

There were other updates as well in 2015, such as Google Photos, Android Marshmallow, Cardboard and the launch of Android Play.

However when it comes to SEO we must mention that the Mobile-Friendly Algorithm has been deployed and impacted the rankings of millions worldwide.

No fierce animals were adopted in 2015

Well, there were of course doomsday talks in the main forums regarding the next Penguin Update by the end of the year, but it seems that the roll out has been postponed to this year. Whether this is likely to happen in 2016 we have yet to wait and see.

There was however an attempt that has rolled out a slow Panda update, but no major impact has been signaled by webmasters. The impact was only on 2-3% of the queries and it was cataloged as a refresh rather than update. The Mozcast – The Google Algorithm Weather Report has not picked up any movements during the period, but you’ll never know. It might be an invisible update that we could notice in the upcoming months, probably when it’s too late.

Which brings us to the latest talks and topics regarding the Google updates, the launch of RankBrain, the search giant’s own AI Machine. Google has been one of the biggest corporate sponsors of Artificial Intelligence and has invested heavily over the last years, mostly for videos, speech, translation and, recently, search.

Bloomberg has conducted an interview last October with Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist with the company, you can call him one of the tech guys from Mountain View, California, to bring an enlightenment regarding this recent wizardry which of course than led to talks such as Skynet and robots taking over the world etc. This is how it usually gets when there are talks about AI…..

 

In the video you can see that Greg has explained that the system helps Google deal with the 15% of the queries, not to mention keeps an edge in search, which is critical to Google.

Greg also mentioned that the RankBrain is one of the “hundreds” of signals that go into an algorithm that determines what results appear on a Google search page and where they are ranked.

The impact of RankBrain on websites in term of SEO have not yet been reported, however RankBrain has become the third-most important signal contributing to the result of a search query.

The topic now is highly discussed in forums and communities dedicated to Search Engine Optimization and the key idea behind many of the posts, comments and articles is that RankBrain will surely impact SEO in the future. As you may know it’s the machine learning addon, and it will continue to enhance itself within some years and it would make life tougher for SEOs.

My opinion is that RankBrain is just the start of a new way to look at SEO and search. Producing high quality, information focused content is now more important than it ever was and you should focus more on it! From the SEO perspective, the changes are really small at this moment. You still need excellent on-site optimization, white hat link building and an efficient social media strategy. However, content will continue to be the key factor as the RankBrain algorithm continues to evolve and grow.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this new Wizardry, do send you comments bellow.

Calling all webmasters and interested parties in the online gambling niche, as you already know, constant Google updates play a key role in not just your traffic potential online, but of course, your earnings too. Therefore, it goes without saying that it behooves you to keep an eye on what the Google overloads are up to, as it impacts your online presence. However, the number one key is not to panic, see it as simply Google trying to improve the consumer experience for web browsers, therefore, figure out how to position yourself to take full advantage. After all, Google has a long track record of updates, it should be part and parcel of online living by now. The Panda updates seem archaic by now. Always remember that the customer is always right, in this case, give your consumers what they want. Useful and valuable content that serves their needs. In other words, if you’ve been consistently producing content with the best interests of your target users in mind, you’re still on the right track. There’s no need to make any drastic changes to your strategy.

The latest Google updates were targeted at enhancing the experience for mobile users. If you’ve noticed the online trends over the past year or two, everything has been shifting towards mobile. In order to continue giving its customers excellent service, Google wants every website to also be mobile friendly. If your website is not, it will be downgraded in the search rankings. If you do happen to see a decline in your organic search traffic, however, there may be a need to address your website’s mobile friendliness. If your online gaming website is already mobile-friendly, then you need to consider some of your on-page SEO. The objective is to make your home page and other important pages as web search friendly as possible. Instead of trying to target a bucket load of keywords, choose some specific ones that you can actually dominate. You may need to narrow your focus on your best strengths.

By now you are obviously aware that Google loves fresh, unique update. Therefore, duplicate content and redundant articles are a no-no. Also write detailed quality articles that engage your readers. Google also penalizes if your on-page metrics are not up to standard. If Google sends you quality traffic but finds out that readers are bouncing off your website after a few seconds, then it automatically deems it a mismatch. So make sure that you are creating valuable online gaming content that informs readers and solves your target market problems. Avoid creating thin content. Prioritize user experience. For example, too many ads on your site can create a negative visitor experience and have an undesired impact on your rankings. Your content should be trustworthy. Visitors that land on your site should feel comfortable giving you their sign-up information. Are you exercising quality control with your content? Your articles should be free of spelling and factual errors. Keep your website platform as user-friendly as possible.

Since fresh content is important when it comes to your day-to-day SEO, the value of updating old content is essential to the well-being of your rankings.

July witnessed the announcement by Google announced that the roll out of Panda 4.2 has been deployed and shall be updating over the next couple of months. This is the first refresh in the last 10 months of the much hated algorithm update that’s responsible for the “content is king” quote that’s been scaring the search industry for a couple of years now.

This has come as a breath of fresh air for anyone who has been hit last September and has worked to repair their low-quality content. But with every update, the doubts are always putting some webmasters in a lot of panic thinking they’ll be on the losing side of upgrade.

But you can always witness somebody crying it all out on social media or forums that he or they’ve been hit and penalized. These webmasters need to think first and act after, but also need to realize that creating irrelevant, pointless or spam content just for getting a link in the search results is never the best approach. What is the point of wasting your energy in creating such content when you could write something that can really improve your presence in the market

Focus on the Panda update but don’t forget that keyword-stuffed and low-quality content is not the only reason why webmasters get a little disturbed around the Panda updates.
Even if you are pretty certain that your content is of good quality, it makes you pause and question all the content you own on your site. Maybe you missed something, is it perfect? What will Google think? What will Google find on my site that he doesn’t like? Nobody can evaluate their site’s content regularly, it’s a known fact that this is unlikely to happen.

However, if you start evaluating you content, you will most certainly find content that is outdated, dead, expired, name how you want it, but it’s not actual anymore. This content is old or outdated but at one point was useful to your users but may not be helpful any more or the news may have evolved in another direction. This happens particularly on review websites of online gambling portals, where promotions expire and new one come in to play, but you have already published that promotion to your websites content.

Depending on how much of content you have, you might even notice the slowing down your site, causing Google to crawl and index these “less important pages” rather than focusing on your more important content.

This can happen in many cases, since you are drawn to focus on creating new fresh content and you forget about the content you created a year (or longer) ago. Blog posts or articles get moved off the home page and are not latest anymore, tweets stop going out, links stop coming in. So what do you do with this outdated content?

Since new content is necessary, but sometimes takes more time to create it than it does to update and optimize something old. That old content is probably still ranking really well, but the information is outdated — promotions have changed, maybe ownership has been change, new information has been presented, or there’s a better way to explaining your point of view.

This means optimizing your outdated content, however keep in mind that you need to be careful about it.

Don’t create new ULS’s as many of the webmaster would create an entirely new page to replace the outdated content to get more pages added to the index. That works as well, but updating the existing content to keep all the authority in one place is far a better idea. That URL ranks well for a reason, right? Why create a new page and start all over again(get it rank, get shares on social media, etc.)?

Add more keywords to capture new traffic. The way user search changes every day, so it’s likely they’re searching new keywords but wanting the same information they been served in the past, but maybe with a bit of update.

It is a good time to analyze and optimize your call-to-action. Updating your content to be better for your users and perform better in search engines gives you the time to think through what you want people to do after they’ve read your casino or sports betting review. Does the gambling site offer a new promotion? Do you have a newly implemented email database users can opt in? New portals to promote? The key is figuring out how to turn that passive reader into an active member or new player in your lead strategy.

However, there is no way around it, the option of deleting that content is the only way.

A lot of your content can be updated and optimized, but there’s some content that you just can’t keep on your site anymore. What can you do with these? Well, you can create 301 redirects for them to make the most out of your chosen content.

In most cases, a 301 redirect is going to be your best choice for content that needs to be deleted. Choose the blog post that has the most page views or better rankings and redirect the duplicate to it.

There are plenty more ways to use your outdated content to better your user experience and improve your rankings without being penalised by Google, but remember don’t forget to create new content to update your old content.