Google’s Panda Update
Introduction
If your business is currently investing in SEO, well you’ve probably already come across the term “Panda update” long before now.
Sure, there’s loads of various SEO terms that a business may already know about, but the Panda update is an important one- so sit up and listen!
This blog post will help to enlighten you as to how the Google Panda update changed SEO, and how some businesses had to drastically change their marketing strategy as a result.
Which websites did the Panda update particularly target?
We always say that us digital marketing agencies can fall broadly into two categories, that’s the group that wishes to continuously cut corners, and then the group that wants to do the tasks properly.
The group of marketing agencies that repeatedly wants to cut corners, well often they market their services at really cheap prices, but there’s normally a good reason for this.
The reason is the marketing agency may write content marketing that is written to a low standard.
The work may well be duplicated, or repeat the same keywords too much, this is the sort of work that the Panda update will penalise.
By penalised we mean that the page may drop in terms of where it ranks, or that particular page on the website may not rank at all.
The main reason that a page or a website would drop is because the SEO work would be deemed low quality by Google’s algorithm. It is also possible for a website to receive a manual penalty.
There are loads of way’s that a website could be deemed “low quality”, but here are a few examples of rubbish seo that Panda is targeting:
Content thin
Ever been looking to buy something, say a new washing machine, and you find a website, yet then you find that the website just doesn’t offer enough information to allow you to purchase.
For example, you may wish to know how fast the washing machine spins at when drying your clothes, but the website just doesn’t offer the information you need.
So, these sorts of websites may just have a line of text as a product description, or sometimes no text at all, basically the seo effort is very poor, so the website may be deemed “content thin”.
If your website seems to be content thin, in terms of lacking information, then you should discuss this with a white hat online marketing agency.
Spammy
Some seo companies simply implement spammy seo. What we mean by spammy is the website simply aims to rank as high as it can, yet the website doesn’t offer good quality information to visitors.
For example, imagine a solicitor’s website, that specialises in the area of divorce, you may want to know a bit about how the divorce process starts, and a bit about that practice.
Yet, a website with spammy seo, well when you land on the website, it may just show “divorce solicitors + city name” repeatedly, that’s well mentioning loads of different cities.
So, the attempt by the seo business was to try and get the website to rank within multiple cities, but in reality, the content isn’t useful to potential customers, so this sort of website would have been affected by Panda.
Instead the website should have focused on offering good quality information to potential customers.
Where the business is based should have been optimised using white hat methods, such as optimising the businesses NAP information.
Duplicated content
If a website was to copy another businesses content marketing, then this can mean that the business could be affected by Panda.
A business should not use duplicated content.
So how should our business be creating content marketing?
Here’s the three things that we believe your business should concentrate on when writing content marketing
Quality
The work must be quality focused, and by using the word “quality”, we mean useful. So, for example, if you are writing a blog post about how to prevent tooth decay, make the article as in-depth, as interesting and as engaging as you possibly can.
By making the work detailed Google will be able to pull out the relevant facts regarding tooth decay.
Google can then match the words with its Knowledge Graph, often SEO’s refer to this matching of related things, which SEO’s call “entities”.
As you can see Google will know that tooth decay is one entity, tooth paste is another and by offering advice on protecting the enamel of the teeth the structure that makes a tooth, would be another.
So, as you can see, if you write a comprehensive article, that offers a lot of advice, then is likely to rank better.
Answer the question
So many seo agencies write articles to a set 500-word count, and do not care about the quality of the advice that the marketing agency is dispensing.
For example, the marketing agency may well be representing a dentist, so they may produce an article on what to do if your tooth was knocked out, resulting in a dental emergency.
Well the SEO company may only have the intention of getting people to call that dental practice, and therefore target the phrase “dental emergency + area”- yet this is likely to be an article that is very shallow in terms of its purpose.
When in reality someone may not want to go to that dental practice, they may well be looking for reliable advice as to what they should do if their tooth has been knocked out.
As you can see offering quality advice is important, aiming to just improve the businesses SEO should be secondary to offering quality advice.
Relevant
The content marketing work should be relevant to your business.
Google’s set of questions
If you wish to read more about the Google Panda update, we would recommend these two articles.
Quality
Does your business require help with its SEO? If so, why not give us a ring?
