Dealing with Google’s Panda (Part One)

While I’ve done a lot of reporting on the impact of Panda (the wins, the losses, the innocent casualties, the guilty somehow spared, what Google’s tracking, etc.), I have yet to give my opinion on what the best SEO approach is. Having seen this bit of sage advice over at Search Engine Watch, it seemed like it was about time that I tossed in my two cents.

What Did Panda Do?

While there are a great number of technical items we can bring up, Google’s Panda was aimed at righting one specific wrong: ranking sites that were gaming the search engine through “spamming.” This spam happened in the form of thin content, produced in ludicrous volume and on a consistent basis, and it happened most substantially on sites known as “farms” (user- or freelancer-generated content sites, such as article hubs).

Panda’s impact and action must be separated. What Panda actually did was looked for markers that flagged sites as farmed/spammy content, then stopped ranking them.

What Does Panda Tell Us, Really?

A lot of search engine optimizers out there saw the results of Panda and got incredibly frightened. Some old tactics were nullified. But rather than recognizing that those specific tactics (i.e., content milling) were just methods of gaming the search engines, some of those optimizers tried to develop new forms of search engine gaming.

Effective? In the short run, you bet. It’s how those optimizers get their fatted calf on the table: by showing positive results right now, and not paying attention to the long-term impact. But wise? Absolutely not. It ignores the fundamental message of Panda: Google cares about how your users respond to a site, and they’re dedicated – full-time and with tens of thousands of employees – to providing the results that users demand. Among other particulars, that means no spam.

Understanding where Google was coming from, conceptually, is an immensely important foundation. What it leads us to, however, is simple advice on how to respond to this major update. That advice will be covered in the second half (part two) of this article.

 

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Dealing with Google’s Panda (Part One)


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