Apr 11
19
Google Panda ranks quality content
Google have sought to undermine attempts by black hat SEO companies to falsely rank for webpages with their new algorithm update, Panda. Roughly a week after this development extended to all English language searches how successful has the change been and how should website developers respond?
The answer to the first question is that it seems, so far, to be generally favourable. A few websites have suffered seemingly unfairly, such as that of the British Medical Journal, despite being authoritative sources of information. Even Google’s own “Places” category originally suffered from the algorithm mislabelling it as spam, proving that there are still kinks to iron out. Some companies claim to have noticed little difference in traffic after the update and some smaller websites still inexplicably rank well despite being visibly flawed. There was never any promise that Panda would be a perfect instant solution to all search results though. Chatter on the blogs and forums seems to indicate a positive response to the new update; that Google’s intention is appreciated by users, and that the high ranking of “content farms” which don’t return the desired data has been generally impaired.
In many ways the answer to the question of website developer response is not a new one, just one that is more important to heed. Relevance and authority are still the fundamentals of a Google search result, but Panda does suggest that certain tweaks may help prevent your ranking slip.
The anticipation of this update has led Norfolk based Web developer Innershed to recommend some of the following SEO measures for client websites in the build-up to this update.
Content
- Use original content, stay on topic and include unique information where possible. This will help promote your website’s relevance and authority.(Shallow content or copied content is as alluring to Google Panda as…..another Google Panda)
Link-building
- Pursue organic links and think about where you put them. A link with a disreputable website can bring you down. Running your own blog can help this.
- Social sharing – Get as much of your information into the public domain to be disseminated naturally through online networks.
Advertising
- Original Content to Advertisement Ratio. Ads should be supplementary to content, content should not lead to ads. Relevant information was what the original search term looked for, not adverts.
Other
- Enough bad pages will likely drag down a website which has otherwise good pages. Expect the domain to be judged, not just the unique URL. Remove any content which you know is not up to scratch.
Whilst the exact details of the metrics Google uses to rank are closely guarded to prevent bad content being optimized back into the rankings, one can fairly speculate that “Click-Through-Rate” (the percentage your link is clicked), “Bounce Rate” (the percentage of people immediately leaving your website) and “Time on Site” are important in Panda. They are requirements that poor sites just cannot can’t cheat a user into fulfilling.
If you want to raise your ranking in Google then your site needs to provide the means to fulfil them. This will inevitably entail more in-depth Search engine optimization work to provide original content which, however bemoaned by businesses looking for a quick fix, is ultimately what is best for users and fairest for search rankings.
Find out what to consider when ranking websites in a simple quality guidelines introduction here
