Take a Glimpse into Upcoming Shifts within Google's Algorithm

Matt Cutts released a video explaining what Google's Spam team has in the works over the next few months. The strategies and clear warnings he talked about are things you can't afford to miss so we've explained the important ones below.

• Paid Content Needs to be Well Marked and Can NOT Pass PageRank

  "Ads should not flow page rank and there should be a clear and conspicuous discloser so that the users realize that something is paid and not organic or editorial."

  Going forward, any ads on your site that pass PageRank will be seen and handled like a paid link. You also need to be sure that advertisements, or content you've been paid to write, on your site are recognizable as such to your site visitors. Sites that do not comply will be seen as selling/buying links and will receive a penalty. These guidelines aren't new, but Google has seen enough abuse of it that they're ready to take 'strong action'.

  These steps will start out as manual publicized penalties and then the algorithm will be trained to handle it automatically...then it'll be yesterday's news. If you have sites under your management that this update will affect then add the rel="nofollow" tag to the offending links and you'll be good to go!

  It was also made clear that this is something that the Google News team will be looking for as well. See Matt's follow-up video on this topic for more clarification:

Google Promises a Ranking Boost to Industry Leaders

"We are doing a better job of detecting when someone is sort of an authority in a specific space. It could be medical, it could be travel, whatever. And trying to make sure that those rank a little more highly, if you are some sort of authority or a site that according to the algorithms we think might be a little bit more appropriate for users."

How do you become an industry leader? Here is our best advice to get you on your way.

• Author Rank - This is accomplished by adding authorship marku...