After reading about the huge impact Google’s latest update has had on US sites, most local UK site owners must have breathed a sigh of relief. While small US site owners were running around in a panic, site owners concentrating on local SEO could sit back and relax. If you’re performing regional SEO on your site, however, it’s definitely time to be on the alert.
The fact that the update rolled out in the US only is a huge boon for UK site owners, although perhaps not in the way that you think. While it’s good that Google UK wasn’t the launching pad for such a huge update, it doesn’t mean that the UK has escaped regional SEO entirely. Or rather, it means that the UK has escaped only for now. The US-first roll-out has meant that local UK site owners can prepare, and prepare thoroughly.Preparing for the inevitable roll-out here is not that difficult:
*Review your content. Everyone slips into bad habits over time. Have a look over your content to make sure it’s of sufficient quality. Remove any content that isn’t original, and replace anything that seems a little irrelevant or overfull of keywords. You can talk to our experts at SEO Consult about judging the quality of your content.
*Review the content of all of your pages. Google’s Matt Cutts noted that bad content on several pages can affect the whole site. If you have a number of pages that are low on content, now is the time to top them up. Talk to your SEO company about content provision if you’re struggling.
*Review your content policies. Desperate site owners have been known to install content-scraping software. Now is the time to get rid of such practices, before Google really begins to crack down. Scraped content has devastated smaller sites in the US.