Google Algorithm Change

If you follow SEO news  then you’re familiar with the Google algorithm change. First it was Google spotlighting what they call “shallow content” by releasing an algorithm change called Panda which targeted content farms that are ranking for top keyword terms. I can understand why this was an important initiative considering Google’s job is to deliver high quality content to end users. If an end user is looking for information that is health related they should find authoritative websites with high quality content- Not about.com or ehow.com with links that lead to third party sites. I believe the shift in search will benefit domain investors that develop high quality sites because they will receive more exposure.

It’s about time…

There has been a lot of talk about Google devaluing exact match keyword domain names. I’m an advocate for premium domains, but to be honest everyone started acquiring domain names specifically for SEO purposes and were ranking without any skill set. I was  literally able to hand register a domain name, install WordPress, write one 350 word article and rank within 2-3 weeks on the first page of Google. I kept telling everyone enjoy it while you can because…

All good things come to an end…

Now that the gravy train is leaving it’s time to take a look at your practices. Were you taking short cuts by leveraging domain names? Have you been investing in real white hat SEO? If not, it’s never too late. A great resource that I use to stay up to date is SEOmoz.org.

A few words from Matt Cutts regarding  Google’s algorithm change:

“Now if you’re still on the fence, let me just give you a bit of color, that we have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains, and some people have complained that we’re giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains,” Cutts said. “And so we have been thinking about adjusting that mix a little bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given two different domains it wouldn’t necessarily help you as much to have a domain with a bunch of keywords in it.”- Matt Cutts, head of Google’s search quality and webspam team.

I’d love to get some feedback from the community on how much you think this will change domain registration behavior. Will you continue to register exact match keyword domain names? Do you think this will depreciate the value of aftermarket domain sales?