Many of you probably have not heard yet, but Google is making changes to its search algorithm again. Industry pundits have just confirmed that the algorithm update titled “Fred” was rolled out on March 7th/8th.

Now we have to figure out what Google did and who will be affected by it.  We all recall the mobile algorithm update that affected CVBs more than other updates because such a high percentage of our website visits are from mobile phones.  This one was driven by what Google had learned by providing the Siri service to iPhone users.

Back to “Fred”….Flintstone comes to mind. But seriously, the change targeted sites with low value, thin content that are created with the sole purpose of generating AdSense revenue or other ad income without necessarily benefiting the user.

This is contrary to Google’s expressed intent to deliver the best answer to the intent behind the searchers question. And they are operating specifically against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

CVB websites should not be affected but to make sure that your landing pages do not get penalized inadvertently, here are few guidelines to ensure that Google does not penalize the SEO ranking of these pages: