Web Marketing: Understanding Googles Panda

Googles Panda: In today’s business environment, digital marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of advertising for your business and conveying its message to a wide variety of potential customers. One of the key factors to having a successful website is ensuring its visibility via a process known as SEO (search engine optimization). (Googles Panda is one of the latest major updates to Google’s SEO algorithm) SEO can make or break a successful website and it is no surprise that many companies who offer web design services attempt to sell SEO services. While there are a lot of promises made to guarantee high search engine rankings, SEO has evolved to be a slow and time consuming process that is only influenced with meaningful changes. One of the biggest reasons for this evolution of SEO is a change to Google’s indexing algorithm, referred to as its development name; Panda.

Googles Panda What’s Changed?

Google, like any other search engine, derives its results via an algorithm. An algorithm is a formula used to come to a result with a variety of data; not unlike how a person would think in a game of “21 Questions”. Initially these search algorithms were not very complex, the search engine would look at the entirety of the internet and rank pages by their effectiveness with relation to the topic searched. These early algorithms typically determined which pages were most relevant by counting uses of specific words or phrases, known as “keywords”. Google would find a website that contained information about automobiles and compare it to other websites about automobiles purely based on who used the word “automobiles” most frequently. This method, albeit primitive, was quite effective when the web was sparse with content furnished mostly by novice or hobbyist level users; most times, a page that used the word searched was found to be relevant and helpful in contrast to sites that may have only cursorily touched on a subject. As the web grew, web marketers realized they could exploit this simple indexing method used by most search engines at the time by simply overinflating the number of keywords used.  Using this method of SEO lead to misleading, and sometimes malicious, websites getting priority in search results over legitimate websites that offered information pertinent to the original search. An example would be a site that hosts viruses using the words “automobile” and “automotive” hidden in a page that would command priority over an actual automotive publication such as “Road & Track”, purely on the basis of word-count being higher. This would also lead to lazy web design which sought to only repeat words ad nauseam, diverting traffic from possibly meaningful, more informative web content. Google, along with other search engines, realized this method would not be sustainable long-term and would dissuade users looking for actual information away from their services; as a result their algorithms are constantly being analyzed and redeveloped in an attempt to provide a more fluid search experience.

Googles Panda: Out With the Old!

Google Panda marks the latest in a long line of algorithm refinement by Google. It is important to note that while we are speaking about Google Panda in this article (Google is the largest search provider in the world) much of the information about algorithm refinement is consistent with any of the major search providers. Panda works with a far greater range of information than previous versions of the Google search algorithm. While keywords were the major motivator of SEO in the past, Panda values the content on the pages in which it is searching and assesses “points” for various criteria. Content Panda values includes frequent updates, up-to-date content, well written content (using a variety of words, longer than a few paragraphs), and diverse content (content that features videos, music, or photos). Panda also keys into current tech trends by giving additional consideration to pages that are “mobile friendly” (a page designed to it displays properly on a mobile device such as a tablet or phone), underscoring the need for websites to be redesigned periodically as tech changes. Panda also lends special credit to websites that are frequently visited or referenced on social media (via a Facebook “like” or Twitter “re-tweet”), as these sites have proven to be a destination for users searching for specific information. Although your website may not be a haven of high traffic, if your website is linked (referenced) from a more populated site this will also have a positive impact on your SEO ratings, furthering the need for content other web surfers find informative. Increased traffic is the second greatest SEO motivator in the Google Panda algorithm metric. While these changes are quite meaningful for the average web surfer, they invent a series of new challenges for anyone who is attempting to establish a digital-foothold for their company’s website. Many SEO services have previously claimed they can guarantee stellar search engine result placement, with these new guidelines a service that is not actively aware of your company is more than likely unable to furnish you with content that will have a positive impact on SEO.

What Can You Do?

Getting your website accustomed to Googles Panda (new SEO standards) your website must be treated as though it were a direct communication to your clients. Making wide generalizations and repeating keywords would not work if you were to have a conversation with a human being, so it’s no wonder that with this “intelligent” algorithm content will have to be in-depth. There are several ways to create valuable content, but they mostly orate around writing in-depth about topics such as services offered, vendors your company works with, promotional events, etc. Maintaining a blog is one of the best ways to accomplish this. As covered before great ways to further capitalize on meaningful content is to write something that is shared by a website that has a greater amount of traffic than your current site; although this method is probably the hardest and most abstract it can pay off rather quickly with visitors from the site that shared your link. Virtually all of the major search engines at this point also have a paid ad model such as Google’s AdWords; these services can be quite costly, but do rely on the old-fashioned model of keywords making your advertising as simplistic as picking “keywords”. The best policy is often to generate decent content and then accelerate this process via AdWords or an equivalent.

Turbo Technicians Can Help!

While SEO has proven to yield only as much effort that is put into your website, Turbo Technicians can maintain or design a plan for you to increase your SEO ranking. We are committed to quality layout design and being involved in the blogging process that organically drives clients to your website