Google Panda and the Importance of Quality Content

Google’s Panda algorithm was brought out to target sites with low quality content. Were you unlucky enough to be affected by this? Why was your site affected? And, what can you do to get back into Google’s good books? In this article, we take a look at what Matt Cutts, head of Google Webspam, has had to say about Panda and those affected.

Panda was originally rolled out a couple of years ago, with the aim to clamp down on low quality site content. Approximately every month, there would be a new Panda update. With each one of these updates, Google have been able to find this low value content much easier, and as changes to Panda were becoming smaller and more incremental, Google decided to incorporate the algorithm into the main indexing process.

If your site was hit by Panda, it’s safe to say you’d have had content that was of poor quality or that was duplicated across multiple article sites and the like. In order to conclude for sure whether it was Panda that has had a negative effect on your search rankings, it is advised to check your Google Webmaster Tools account for any alerts that could shed light on the matter.

So, your search rankings have dropped and you’ve determined Panda is responsible - What can you do to rectify this? Well as Cutts sums it up nicely, “The overriding kind of goal is to try to make sure that you’ve got high-quality content, the sort of content that people really enjoy, that’s compelling, the sort of thing that they’ll love to read that you might see in a magazine or in a book, and that people would refer back to, or send friends to, those sorts of things”. It is important then, to really understand your audience, the kind of things they want to see or read, and create content that’s focused, targeted and based with them in mind.

Ensure that your site is free of content that is unoriginal or copied from elsewhere, and instead, place a focus on real quality, relevant and useful information. With this in mind, you should be better placed for higher rankings in Google where Panda is concerned.