From the point of view of a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, or the business owner who is working with an SEO, a major goal in online marketing is to achieve the highest possible ranking on Google. Quality content will help you get there.
How do you get there? A good starting point is to get an understanding of how Google looks at the same situation. They want to give the highest ranking to the best search result, which would be the website which most closely answers the questions being asked by the end user.
Google’s own success depends on their ability to provide search results that are exactly what their users are looking for. Over the years, Google has invested enormous amounts of time, effort and money into refining and beefing up their search algorithms to do just that.
What Does Google Panda Mean for Quality Content?
With hundreds of unique elements, Google’s algorithm effectively filters through what’s out there on the web to zero in on the websites that will be the most appropriate to their users queries, and a major development along this line has been the Panda update, something that anyone trying to get results in SEO should be well familiar with.
What does Google Panda look for? The short answer is “quality content.” In any discussion of Panda, what it does, how it works and how to get results with it, you’ll hear the word “content” again and again, because this is at the core of what Panda is designed to do.
Essentially, Panda makes the Google search engine more effective at screening website content to locate the good and filter out the bad. What would be “bad content” in reference to Panda? A common example would be duplicate or scraped content, such as blog articles with substantial sections copied from news stories, or landing pages on a website which
For example, duplicate or scraped articles. These refer to blog articles with substantial sections copied from news stories, or landing pages on a website taken from other sites. Another example would be “thin content,” pages which have little to offer in terms of text and which don’t really say anything but rather are filled with fluff and filler.
Another example would be “thin content”. Specifically, pages which have little to offer in terms of text and which don’t really say anything. Instead, they contain fluff and not much substance.
Working with Google’s Panda Algorithm
How can you succeed with Panda? There is no formula for working with Panda, no tricks or shortcuts that will help you avoid an algorithmic penalty in this framework.
For the most part, the only real solution is to ensure that the content on your website is the result of your sincere effort to generate high-quality content. The articles, blogs, landing pages and anything else should be fresh, unique and original. Some of the questions you should ask yourself in your efforts to make your online content Panda friendly include:
- “Does this content answer the questions that my potential customers are asking?”
- “What makes this page different from the competitors’?”
- “Did I write this just to rank, or am I providing some type of value to my target audience?
- “Why would Google want to show my page ahead of any others?”
Don’t try to find a way to cheat the system or sneak around the Panda algorithm. Instead, consider that you and Google are partnering up to provide answers, resources, and information to your target audience. Google wants to give its users what they’re looking for, and your key to success in a Panda world is to help them do just that.
The goal of Google’s search algorithm is to stay ahead of the competition, especially in terms of being the best at showing users the websites that answer their questions. So it’s up to you to make sure that your website does just that, so that Google will recognize yours as being the best of the best.