Why the Google Panda Update Didn't Change SEO
Author: Mike Wood
The Google panda update did ding a lot of sites, but the main focus of the update seemed to be getting rid of content farms. If you're not familiar with a content farm, it's basically a constant stream of posts and articles (either unique or copied) that simply exist to put more content on a webpage in hopes of focusing keywords and attracting backlinks from pingbacks and re-posts. You could have a team of outsourcers that could write literally hundreds of subpar articles and publish them to improve their search engine optimization efforts. And it worked; at least for a while.
Some big name businesses were even caught up in the content farm scheme - look what happened with J.C. Penney. In one simple update, Google took away what had worked and worked surprisingly well for months. During this time content was king - the more you had the better - it didn't matter where it came from or how well it was written; content was content.
Now the question is, did content farming work for everyone? Not really. Like it still does now, Google relies very heavily – even though they vehemently deny it – on its own metric of pagerank or PR and the age of the domain. Older sites were able to (and still can) post hundreds of links to their sites a week without taking any ding in search results. This is something a new domain couldn't and still can't do; or they'll be destined for the sandbox (although it's not really as bad as it sounds).
So what did Google do? They decided that instead of changing the rules for older sites vs. newer sites, they would change how they read and grade content; which makes for a more even playing field in the long run. The person with the better content gets the recognition; sites that are merely copying and pasting are regarded as junk; but authority sites and older domains still have the advantage – they just need to provide some decent content for a change.
Now there was an unfortunate side effect of the Google panda update, article sites were hit, and hit hard. Specifically Ezine Articles and Articlebase, which saw their search rankings take a huge smack from the Panda. Google's new algorithm regarded these sites as content farms. But anybody who writes articles understands that these sites are no content farms. These sites have teams of people who read, edit, and approve articles for these sites; there is no duplicate content and the quality is high. So why the hit?
Well, even though these sites were not (and still aren't) content farms, they did leverage an incredible amount of power from being such prominent domains. At the peak of search engine optimization before the Google Panda update, I could pick a keyword (almost any keyword you could imagine) write a properly optimized article, post it on a high profile article site, and get it on the 1st page of Google within 3 days. No joke. It took barely any effort to get these high in the SERPS - these sites had become so powerful, they completely dominated the search results. It was rare to find a niche keyword where an article directory or eHow page wasn't in the top 10.
So was the panda hit on these sources deserved? Yes and No. Yes because it was too easy to get high rankings and results from articles alone, and No because some of the articles were legitimately written and probably deserved the rankings they had achieved.
Even though article directories might have taken an unfair hit, one thing is for sure, eHow deserved it's slap. eHow was, and still is a content farm. Most of their articles are simply junk pieces, written quickly and without much care, and are loaded, absolutely filled to the brim, with ads. Yet after the Panda dust settled, I still find eHow results in the top 10 for nearly 50% of the keywords I'm researching. Why is that? Has eHow found a way to game the Panda system or has their content gotten better. Something tells me it's not the latter.
The truth is, after the initial hit and much of the dust settled, most of my sites are doing way better than they ever were before the Google Panda update. Some of them have improved way better than I expected, but that really doesn't come as a surprise to me. What Google panda did was get rid of the junk in their SERPS and reward those with good link structure and content.
Anyone who knows good search engine optimization knows the basics of on page and off page seo and the importance that content and solid backlinks bring. Not paying for links, not spamming, not content farming, these were all things people knew they shouldn't be doing, but they did anyway, and why? Because for a while it worked. But like every Google update before it, Panda was there to close the exploits, ding the black hats, and reward the white hats.
Content – quality content – has and always will be king to Google. They might favor older or authority domains, but they generally have good quality content to go along with them. If you want to create a site and optimize it for a keyword, you can't keyword stuff or content farm anymore, you need to put some effort behind it; but that's always been the case. So did the Google Panda update change seo for good? Yes and No.
Yes because the act of content farming, article and backlink spamming, are effectively dead. No because the same principles that provided good results in the past still provide good results today. The Google Panda update is just another, in a long line of Google updates, to improve and reward the hardworking marketers that continue to do things the right way.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/why-the-google-panda-update-didnt-change-seo-4972284.html
About the Author
Mike runs an orange county seo company based out of Aliso Viejo California. He writes and comments on internet marketing and industry news.
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