The Effects of the Jagger Update

It would appear that the Jagger update has targeted reciprocal links and other strategies for artificially building link popularity, ushering in a new age of “TrustRank”. This is a Google patent that monitors the age, relevance and “trust” of a link. Google considers some sites to be more trustworthy than others, and therefore a link from one of these sites will carry more weighting than irrelevant reciprocal links or link farm junk, and therefore the value of such links has been devalued. Combined with Google’s sandbox effect, this means that websites now need:

• An adequate number of quality content pages
• An adequate number of correctly aged relevant links
• To be well-established and of a certain age

The Aims of the Jagger Update

This modification to the Google algorithm assumes that sites which are related will want to link to each other without reciprocating links. That is to say you will want to link to another website to offer your visitors more relevant information and not to artificially boost Google rankings. Furthermore, the Jagger update also ensures your site is considered to be of value because it assumes that sites will only link to your site because it is worth their while.

New Website Strategies

As a result of the Jagger update, new websites may find that it takes them even longer to be released from the age-delayed Google sandbox. There are strategies which can be undertaken, however, to speed up the process:

• Other Search Engines – Although Google can account for over half of the traffic arriving at your website, the combined result of the other search engines will account for the remaining 50%. This is why concentrating your efforts solely on Google is a misguided strategy. Two directories which Google still considers to be important are the Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Although there are some issues with both of these directories, links from these directories are still considered trustworthy and can help to get you out of the sandbox quicker. With some effort the MSN and Yahoo! search engines can also send targeted visitors to your site. Ask Jeeves has emerged as the 4th most popular search engine and is also worth keeping an eye on.

• Beat the Aging Delay - Even if your website is included in these and other related directories it is still subject to the aging delay. Therefore, the website navigation needs to be designed to encourage any new content to be discovered quickly to help it move quickly through this process.

• Relevant Websites - Keep your eyes open for related sites that complement yours. Many websites get much of their converting traffic directly from well placed links on other sites. Also consider writing industry related articles and submitting them to other industry specific sites.

• Updating - Ensure that the site is always growing and improving. This helps increase your internal links which has a positive effect on link popularity and PageRank.

• Pay-Per-Click – A PPC campaign may be worth considering. Although the traffic won’t be “free”, consider the ROI rather than the initial cost. If you can strike the right balance between your cost per click and conversion rate then this method can turn out to be highly profitable and also has the added benefit of not being at the mercy of algorithm updates.

Although the Jagger update may have penalised reciprocal linking, the emphasis put on relevant one-way links should mean that if the website content development and link building is handled correctly the site will stand a good chance of getting out of the “sandbox” quicker and getting great Google rankings.