Googles Panda Update Effects on SEO – One Year Later

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In 2011, Google released its Panda “update.” This software shook the SEO world to its foundation, designed as it is to sift unacceptable content and lower the scores of those websites found guilty of spam SEO and other no-nos. The software was named for its creator at Google.

One year later, many SEO strategists are still unsure what drives Panda’s filtering process or what algorithms are used to determine quality of content. Panda was designed to target “content farms,” sites where many writers contributed low- or poor-quality web content to generate search keywords.

Therefore, those who want to avoid Panda’s clutches must use high-quality, relevant content on their sites.  There have been millions of words written on the subject, but they all boil down to one thing:  it is getting harder and harder to “cheat” your way into good SEO results by robotic linking strategies or black-hat SEO.

In the old days, if you wanted to raise your rankings, it was fairly simple to do provided you were willing to pay for the privilege.  Link farms sold wholesale content and links to businesses and would point to your website from anything from a shoe catalog site to a boating site, no matter what you were selling.  It was a cheap, simple way to drive your website up in the rankings, but there were inherent problems with these strategies.

Customers got tired of pop-up ads and links that went nowhere they wanted to go from the sites they visited.  In response, Google began to rank web pages based not on the number of visitors but on the quality of the site, including the links that pointed to it from other places.

This move represented a fundamental change in SEO strategy, and SEO experts scrambled to learn the new rules of the game.  Ultimately, all of the changes represented by Panda and its future updates boiled down to one thing:  you must have quality content and relevant links in order to win Google’s approval.  After all, Google is recognized as the primary search engine in the world, so it has a reputation to protect.  When you search Google for a keyword, the company wants you to land on pages that make you say, “Yes, that’s exactly what I was looking for.”

Looking at this from the other end of the spectrum, as a business owner with a website you have a responsibility to advertise yourself honestly.  If you have good, original content with relevant links from trusted sites pointing to you, you will probably never receive the dreaded Google censure.  On the other hand, if you take shortcuts, you are probably going to get burned.

The experts at Orange County SEO understand the realities of advertising in today’s Internet market and can help you tailor your website, links and other media to meet these demands.  If you are searching for an experienced Orange County SEO company please contact us today to receive a free quote.  Call us at 949-494-0007.