Member Article

What is the Panda update?

I recently did a talk at the ISMM in Newcastle, it was great, I had a great audience that kept me on my toes with questions. One of the main questions that I thought would be asked wasn’t: What’s the deal with the major algorithm updates? Perhaps it is too technical a question.

The Panda update was first introduced in February 2011. A lot of internet marketers quit around this time. The update simply works as a filter to stop low quality content from ranking top in the search engine results page. Since then it’s pretty much received yearly updates. We are now on the fourth update of Panda which was released on 23rd May 2014.

How do you beat this update?

“Adding leaves to your website.” Just kidding, but the analogy is probably the same. Make sure you add high quality content and reference effectively. Give the people what they want and let it grow over time, like leaves on a branch.

The biggest mistake I see…

People who create content specifically for the search engines, this is generally unreadable and not suitable for any native English speaker, so why would Google consider it to be of high quality. Quality content should be written from the perspective of giving quality information, advice and guidance to your reader. If you do this then you shouldn’t have a problem with any Panda refresh.

Just keep tight reigns on your content and ensure that it’s relevant.

In the next post I will talk about the Penguin update and how you can fix up and get around poor link building.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Karl Hudson .