Recently, there was an earthquake felt in the World Wide Web that would easily rank around a 7.0 on the Richter scale if it had been a real world event. It certainly did shake the Internet in a way that affected hundreds if not thousands of websites, blogs, and other pages. That earthquake is named Google Panda. When this update was rolled out, a whole new method of search engine rankings came into play and this seriously affected numerous sites that lost their rankings in a split second. The truth is, this update and others are designed to crack down on poor quality content and it could affect you if you do not make the right decisions.
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The Crackdown
The problem with the Internet is that anyone can post anything anywhere. There are very few rules or laws that govern the content included on the Internet and this results in plenty of problematic sites. In the past, it was all too easy for site owners just to throw some information up and still bring in traffic. When search engines started using keywords or SEO, people found it all too easy just to stuff as many keywords as possible into nonsensical content in order to gain rankings. That used to work, but those days are over.
When the search engine programmers realized the big problem of overinflated rankings for bad sites, they began a crackdown process. The most obvious of those crackdowns would be the Google Panda update since it made the most headlines. When this update rolled out, it rolled out with the sole purpose of penalizing poor quality sites and moving high quality ones up in the rankings.
Don’t Assume You are Ok
You may have never intentionally used poor quality information or underhanded techniques like keyword stuffing, but you should not assume you are safe from the search engine crackdown. In fact, numerous perfectly legitimate sites were harmed by these updates. Call it collateral damage if you would like, but it is damage that you need to avoid nonetheless. A few things you need to keep in mind about these new changes and your site content include the following:
- Keywords should be used sparingly (preferably 1%) to be recognized as quality content and not keyword stuffing.
- Websites with more advertisements than content will be dropped in search engine rankings.
- Search engine crawlers are capable of recognizing poor content, bad spelling, and mistakes in grammar. You must include quality, useful content.
- You cannot just sell yourself. This will drop you in the rankings. Your site needs to feature actual, helpful information and not just one sales pitch after another.
Take a look at your website. Are you safe from the search engine crackdown? If you are not, then you need to take action immediately.
Hire a Quality Writer
Your number one priority would be to get quality content on your site, and it needs to be content that meets the needs of the search engine parameters. The best way to do this is to hire a professional writer who is skilled at writing web content. The right writer will understand the updates and will keep abreast of any changes to them. This way, they will be able to provide you with the kind of quality content that will actually raise you in the rankings instead of causing you to lose ground.
The whole purpose of new search engine updates is to weed out poor quality websites and reward those sites that are well-written and useful. It is a good purpose, but the new parameters have had a drastic effect on many people and businesses. Make sure you are not being harmed by the search engine crackdown.
on
I think it is very good that they are doing this. Now people that have good quality information and less money can make it to the top ranks. I’m really proud of google for them making the choice to do all of this.
on
I have to agree with Bigbigfan — Google still seems to be stuck on backlink quantity and quality as its most important deciding factor on serp placement. When a company with a uniquely named product name cannot rank first, second or third for their own product, then something is amiss.
on
I wasn’t hit by Panda but I swear I was labeled as not likely to produce good content in some way because I can’t seem to get new sites to rank well at all, no matter how awesome they are.
The net is still about backlinks, if I write an article it’s not going to get traffic but if I manage to find 100+ sites to link to it I have a shot at #1. I’m not sure Panda helps surface good content to be honest, it doesn’t seem to care how good content is if the “other” signals aren’t there.
I think that’s a huge mistake on Google’s part, the best content should always be ranked #1 even if it doesn’t yet have a bazillion backlinks.
on
I think now I need to have a high quality writer. I’ve been writing my own content, but I don’t seem to write anything with attention grabbing words. I basically lack writing a sales pitch and would rather pay a professional to write for me.