There’s only one way out of a deep rut, and that’s to actually work at getting out of it. If you’re going to wait for things to settle down or for other people to do the work for you, you’ll be stuck in the search engine’s penalty mud for a long time.
This is the mentality that SEOs should have with regards to Google and its numerous algorithm updates, particularly Panda and Penguin. We say ignore the name, and we mean that: take the updates at face value and don’t let the label intimidate you so much. It certainly doesn’t mean continuing with widely-practiced strategies that are bound to fail, or underestimating the strength of the updates. It simply means concentrating on the effects they inflict on your website and coming up with SEO services that will work well with them. If all else fails you can hire a team from a reputable SEO company to do the damage control for you.
No Need for War
The common reactions among webmasters when each of the updates was introduced are along the lines of rebellion, irritation, frustration, anger, and the desire to boycott the search engine. While some of you have no doubt felt the same way, it won’t change the fact that if your website is sub-par, then it will also be perceived by other search engines as sub-par.
Instead of looking for SEO services that will cheat and go around the rules implemented by the Google updates, why not do things the honest way and just work at making your website the best that it can be? After all, what matters is that you can satisfy your visitors just as much as—if not more than—Google and other search engines.
And then, what’s the purpose of generating organic traffic if the copy of your site is poor and not converting to sales?
Must-Dos in the Aftermath of Penguin and Panda
1. High-Quality Content
Google wants to provide the best search experience for their users, and that means they’ll rank up websites that can offer high-quality content that’s valuable and useful for searchers. Those with useless, erroneous, and poorly-written content will be delegated the last spots in the SERPs.
Writing excellent content for your website is one of the best and most effective ways to convince Google your website is high-quality. All written and visual content should be related to the website’s main topic. The information should be correct, articles well-written, and users should be able to trust the credibility of your website. Always refer to Google’s guidelines for building high-quality websites so that you can be certain of the overall quality of your own website. This is also your way of making peace with Panda.
The following are things you can do to improve the overall quality of your website:
- Check the quality of your articles.
- Remove poorly-written pages.
- Correct text errors.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Publish unique, engaging, and informative articles.
- Recognize and reference authority sources.
Producing high-quality content should now be a priority concern although that doesn’t mean you’ll have to leave link building in the dust. Links, after all, are still considered important ranking signals. This leads us to our next item.
2. High-Quality Links
The Penguin update is forcing webmasters to think twice about linking just about everywhere. Webmasters used to acquire as many backlinks as they can, both through white-hat methods and outright spamming strategies (ex: blog spamming, link buying, concealed links, reciprocating links, creating doorway pages). The problem is, Google is now on to these dishonest methods of manipulating page ranks. Thanks to Penguin, websites with excessive and spammy link-building activities will be penalized and demoted in their PR.
Quality over quantity: this should now be your mantra where links are concerned. You can do the following to make sure your website won’t be penalized:
- Cease link-spamming activities, if you’re currently doing it.
- Request lower-quality websites to remove backlinks to your own site.
- Be a guest blogger for authority websites and provide a link to your own site.
- Remove any link that will be deemed manipulative by Google.
Incorporate the links in very good content as much as possible. If you don’t want your links to look like webspam, you need to make them as natural-sounding as possible. Including them in articles is one way to do that.
3. Website Structure
After you’ve improved your website’s content quality and cleaned up your links, you need to have an organized website structure so that they will be properly crawled by search engines. Recall that an organized website structure is also one factor in website ranking. If you neglect to do this, your efforts in improving your website’s pages will not be recognized and indexed right away by Google.
4. Avoid Black-Hat SEO
Basically, if you avoid doing any black-hat SEO, you should be in Google’s good graces at all times. Yes, you may not shoot up to first place in the SERPs right away, but in the long run you’ll be much better off than black-hat practitioners. The updates introduced by Google are here to stay, and scheming your way around it all the time will only bring temporary benefits.
Now isn’t the time to concentrate on technical SEO. Work on your website and truly improve its quality. At the end of the day, users will still be the ones to judge your website; if they are unsatisfied and unconvinced by its quality and credibility, you cannot encourage them to purchase, subscribe, or do anything you would like them to do.
“Fear of a Name Increases Fear of the Thing Itself”
This is a very popular quote from the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It seems to be a very apt quote in describing how people are reacting towards Google Penguin, and indeed the Panda. Come to think of it, these two aren’t the only updates to the search engine’s algorithm. Many others remain unnamed. In fact, on the very same month that the Penguin update was first introduced, Google conducted a second Panda update and another unnamed update.
If you want to keep track with algorithm changes, you need to pay more attention to Google’s trend in ranking websites than keeping an ear and an eye out for another Atlantic animal that might be patrolling through the nooks and crannies of your website.
This is the mentality that SEOs should have with regards to Google and its numerous algorithm updates, particularly Panda and Penguin. We say ignore the name, and we mean that: take the updates at face value and don’t let the label intimidate you so much. It certainly doesn’t mean continuing with widely-practiced strategies that are bound to fail, or underestimating the strength of the updates. It simply means concentrating on the effects they inflict on your website and coming up with SEO services that will work well with them. If all else fails you can hire a team from a reputable SEO company to do the damage control for you.
No Need for War
The common reactions among webmasters when each of the updates was introduced are along the lines of rebellion, irritation, frustration, anger, and the desire to boycott the search engine. While some of you have no doubt felt the same way, it won’t change the fact that if your website is sub-par, then it will also be perceived by other search engines as sub-par.
Instead of looking for SEO services that will cheat and go around the rules implemented by the Google updates, why not do things the honest way and just work at making your website the best that it can be? After all, what matters is that you can satisfy your visitors just as much as—if not more than—Google and other search engines.
And then, what’s the purpose of generating organic traffic if the copy of your site is poor and not converting to sales?
Must-Dos in the Aftermath of Penguin and Panda
1. High-Quality Content
Google wants to provide the best search experience for their users, and that means they’ll rank up websites that can offer high-quality content that’s valuable and useful for searchers. Those with useless, erroneous, and poorly-written content will be delegated the last spots in the SERPs.
Writing excellent content for your website is one of the best and most effective ways to convince Google your website is high-quality. All written and visual content should be related to the website’s main topic. The information should be correct, articles well-written, and users should be able to trust the credibility of your website. Always refer to Google’s guidelines for building high-quality websites so that you can be certain of the overall quality of your own website. This is also your way of making peace with Panda.
The following are things you can do to improve the overall quality of your website:
- Check the quality of your articles.
- Remove poorly-written pages.
- Correct text errors.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Publish unique, engaging, and informative articles.
- Recognize and reference authority sources.
Producing high-quality content should now be a priority concern although that doesn’t mean you’ll have to leave link building in the dust. Links, after all, are still considered important ranking signals. This leads us to our next item.
2. High-Quality Links
Quality over quantity: this should now be your mantra where links are concerned. You can do the following to make sure your website won’t be penalized:
- Cease link-spamming activities, if you’re currently doing it.
- Request lower-quality websites to remove backlinks to your own site.
- Be a guest blogger for authority websites and provide a link to your own site.
- Remove any link that will be deemed manipulative by Google.
Incorporate the links in very good content as much as possible. If you don’t want your links to look like webspam, you need to make them as natural-sounding as possible. Including them in articles is one way to do that.
3. Website Structure
4. Avoid Black-Hat SEO
Now isn’t the time to concentrate on technical SEO. Work on your website and truly improve its quality. At the end of the day, users will still be the ones to judge your website; if they are unsatisfied and unconvinced by its quality and credibility, you cannot encourage them to purchase, subscribe, or do anything you would like them to do.
“Fear of a Name Increases Fear of the Thing Itself”
This is a very popular quote from the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. It seems to be a very apt quote in describing how people are reacting towards Google Penguin, and indeed the Panda. Come to think of it, these two aren’t the only updates to the search engine’s algorithm. Many others remain unnamed. In fact, on the very same month that the Penguin update was first introduced, Google conducted a second Panda update and another unnamed update.
If you want to keep track with algorithm changes, you need to pay more attention to Google’s trend in ranking websites than keeping an ear and an eye out for another Atlantic animal that might be patrolling through the nooks and crannies of your website.
