A few things you should know about the Google Panda update
Introduction
If your business invests in SEO, well your bound to have heard of the Google Panda update.
So, whether the term has cropped up in an SEO meeting, or perhaps you’ve seen the term mentioned in an seo blog post, you’re probably thinking what does the term mean.
The Google Panda update was an important algorithm update that helped to weed out low quality websites.
This blog post describes the types of websites that were affected, and why quality matters when it comes to SEO.
Which websites did the Panda update particularly target?
It’s fair to say that online marketing agencies can fall into one of two categories, that’s the ones that want to implement quality work, and the agencies that want to cut corners.
Now some businesses may think what’s wrong with cutting a few corners, that’s if the business get’s onto the first page of Google?
Well, the answer is simple, if corners are cut then often Google’s algorithm will detect this, and Google can then issue a penalty.
Sometimes a manual or algorithmic penalty is implemented. However sometimes the website may just see some pages, or sometimes the whole website drop in terms of where it ranks.
And this can be because Google’s algorithm has detected low quality seo. Here are some examples of the sort of rubbish seo that Google’s Panda update does not like.
Content thin websites
Ever been searching to find a product or service, then once you’ve found a business you’ve been rather unimpressed by the company’s website.
For example, the website may not have enough information to allow you to purchase the product.
You may want to purchase a new desk for example, yet the website does not supply you with the dimensions of the desk.
Plus, you would like to know what wood the desk is made from, yet the website just offers very basic information or none at all.
This sort of page on a website could be deemed “content thin”- as in does not have enough information.
Spammy
Some businesses opt for the cheapest seo quote they can find, however quite often if the seo work is really cheap, well this is often when the work could be spammy.
An example of a spammy website would be for example, say a garden maintenance business, that lists many areas that they complete work.
What often makes this spammy is that each page will have the same list of areas, and an attempt will be made to get the website to rank high for each main service, such as garden fencing for example.
Duplicated content
A lot of websites that copied content from another website would have been impacted by the Panda update.
For example, say a business was retailing a dishwasher, the business may copy and paste the product description directly from the manufacturer. And you may be thinking, why not? As this would surely save a lot of time?
Well, no and here’s why, Google likes a website to have original content. This means if a website duplicates its work from another source, this could mean that the website incurs a penalty.
So how should our business be creating content marketing?
The content marketing that you create for your business we believe should satisfy the following criteria:
Relevant
The work should be relevant to your business, i.e what questions do your customers frequently ask?
You should then aim to answer these questions as best you can.
Quality
The content marketing that your business produces must be of a high quality. What we mean by high quality is the work should be useful.
For example, you may sell used luxury cars, so to stand out from the crowd you should create content marketing that aims to be better than your competitors. For example, you may publish an article such as “Our top 10 500+ bhp cars for under 50k”
Then the article should have sufficient detail, so the author should justify why they have selected those model cars, and why they offer such value at under 50k.
This will make for an interesting read for car enthusiasts that are interested in sports cars. This then should bring visitors to your website, and the article may gain likes and shares on social media.
This could mean that other websites link to the work, so backlinks may well be created.
Therefore, the work should be quality focused, that’s by being useful to your readers.
Not spammy
Our best advice is this, do not create content marketing just for pure SEO gain, it simply will not work.
You have to put your target customer first. That’s to say which type of work will most interest them?
Google’s set of questions
If you want to learn more about Google’s Panda update, then we would recommend this article.
We would also recommend reading this article:
How we can help:
If your business requires help with its SEO, then why not call us?