Google recently carried out a major update on its ranking algorithm, dubbed "Jagger" by the SEO community. Many webmasters have been left scratching their heads, wondering why their websites are no longer appearing for search terms they previously ranked well for and gained traffic from. So what can you do in the aftermath of "Jagger", and how can you safeguard yourself from future updates?

Google, like all search engines, has an algorithm that is used to determine the order of their search engine results pages (SERPs). This algorithm is made up of over 100 factors used to determine the ranking of a page. The reason Google needs to continually update this algorithm is to combat unscrupulous search engine optimisers who figure out factors of the algorithm and then try to exploit them in order to gain high rankings. This exploitation usually results in poor quality, or "spammy" pages, which are irrelevant to the user and therefore not results that Google wants to provide.