Google's Panda 4.1
October 23, 2014
In some of our past articles, we've talked about how stringent Google has been when it comes to SEO and what Google considers "high-quality content."
The method behind the madness is all thanks to Google's Panda algorithm. Panda's sole mission is to refine search results; this includes weeding out any low-quality content while rewarding high-quality content. It is exactly what controls how strict Google's search results are today.
Whereas before SEO strategies were almost free-range to a point of keyword stuffing, Panda influenced SEO to become a more user-focused content strategy.
Panda was first released in February 2011 and has since had 27 updates. As of this writing in October 2014, they have just released their 27th update, entitled Panda 4.1.
How does this new update affect you? Generally, Panda's updates throughout the years involved tightening aspects of search results and further rewarding high-quality content. Specifically with the newest update, they have changed their algorithm to have new signals that precisely identifies low quality content with more accuracy. At the same time, the new update rewards businesses that prioritize the quality of their content.
With all this talk of "high quality content" early analyses of this newest update show that news sites and content-based sites are considered high quality. This makes sense as news is constantly being updated and thus the site is always active with new content.
On the other side of the spectrum, it then makes sense that sites such as lyrics sites are on the low end of what Google considers quality content. This is because of the obvious repeated content throughout the Internet, thereby classifying it as unoriginal. Other sites that are affected are gaming sites or medical sites seeing that there is not as much need for it to be constantly updated.
The effects of being identified as low-quality content is evident in the drop in search visibility. It will be hard for others to naturally find your site. To combat this there are two main practices to keep in mind:
First, review your content: go through your website and audit and update it. Have a content strategy as part of your overall business and marketing campaign. Think about the frequency of it being updated and how original your content is.
Second, Get rid of thin content: speaking of originality, you don't want any duplicates. With Panda's 27th update, there is no doubt that it is smarter and better able to detect for any thin content. If you find your site plagiarizing, copy and pasting content, or duplicating anything, consider deleting it because it may be pulling your website ranking down. At this point it should be a priority to write custom, personalized, original, and unique content.
Specifically with press releases, make sure the content you submit is original and not a duplicate from a previous press release. In particular, when it comes to quotes, make sure it is an original quote catered to your press release and not one simply taken from a previous press release or document that may already be out there.
With the latest Panda update, it changes the game of how we go about our marketing campaigns and business online, and it will only become more strict with future updates; we at 24-7 Press Release could not stress more about creating well-written, newsworthy, and original content to distribute your news as effectively as possible.