Google’s Penguin algorithm update has certainly been causing a big stir over recent months with updates around Thanksgiving in the US causing sites to drop off the ranking and similar issues across the globe. As we know, the Penguin algorithm is Google’s way of tackling link spam and bad links, trying to clean up number of dodgy paid links and directories that have for some been in place for many years.
The impact of a Penguin penalty can be severe – a loss of rankings on your own brand name is the worst case scenario and a period of time in the search abyss. It’s easy to see why SEOs place a lot of emphasis on dealing with potential link spam issues as there is nothing worse than seeing a client lose their rankings, especially if the links were in place long before you took over the management of their SEO activity. We totally get why you would want to ensure the link profile is as clean as possible – we do the same thing here but one thing not to forget in all this is the other side of the Google algorithm – Panda.
Panda 4.1
We are now on Panda update 4.1. This particular algorithm looks at tackling the issues of poor quality content across the web and is a long term play for SEOs. Google’s mission is to provide search results that display the most relevant results to the end user and that means putting quality content first. The thing is, we know you have had enough of us telling you that you need to produce quality content, you want to know what it means.
Well, thankfully our friends over at Moz have done a lot of work looking into the latest Panda 4.1 update and thanks to the brilliant Josh Bachynski they have a come up with a list of the top four dos and don’ts when it comes to producing quality content and Josh explains it all in a Moz Whiteboard Friday from early December 2014:
Main Panda 4.1 takeaways
Hopefully you took the time to listen to Josh explain the impact of the most recent Panda update but just in case you didn’t, here is our quick summary:
Dos
- Help people to complete what they start on your page: download something, sign up for something, read a top 5 list of something. Also, make sure they can do it quickly so make the page load quickly and the content easy to access.
- Get people talking about your content – whether this is on social media, blogs, links, reviews etc – get them to reference the content on your site, especially if they are considered an expert in the field. If it is a review, make sure it is something Google can read like Yelp or Google Plus.
- One that not a lot of people know about – display business information on every page of your site so address, phone, contact info etc. Put your mission statement online and make sure your copyright and cookie policies are up-to-date.
- Finally make sure you cite your sources (rather like us citing Josh on this blog) – whether it is Wiki or another information site, make sure you give them a heads up.
- Don’t repeat keywords too much on one page or across lots of different pages. Google wants to see that you have unique content on each page and that each bit of unique content is important about one particular topic.
- Don’t make content for the sake of it and don’t make content just for search. You don’t have to post a new blog every week if you don’t have anything good to say that is going to add value to your end customer.
- Make sure you check and double check everything before you publish – avoid unnecessary 404 errors, make sure the spelling and grammar is checked, the links work etc – quality content means making sure everything is polished and ready for public consumption before publishing.
- The final thing is not littering your site with ads. Although these can help draw revenue, they also get in the way of a user having a good experience on the site, especially if they are found in the main content area in between paragraphs. This is really annoying and was directly mentioned in the Quality Raters Guidelines as a low-quality site signal.
Don’ts
- Don’t repeat keywords too much on one page or across lots of different pages. Google wants to see that you have unique content on each page and that each bit of unique content is important about one particular topic.
- Don’t make content for the sake of it and don’t make content just for search. You don’t have to post a new blog every week if you don’t have anything good to say that is going to add value to your end customer.
- Make sure you check and double check everything before you publish – avoid unnecessary 404 errors, make sure the spelling and grammar is checked, the links work etc – quality content means making sure everything is polished and ready for public consumption before publishing.
- The final thing is not littering your site with ads. Although these can help draw revenue, they also get in the way of a user having a good experience on the site, especially if they are found in the main content area in between paragraphs. This is really annoying and was directly mentioned in the Quality Raters Guidelines as a low-quality site signal.
So, that’s it in a nutshell. Thanks to Josh for the Whiteboard Friday and hopefully this will give you food for thought and keep Panda fresh in your mind.