Introduction

Whether you’ve just started investing in SEO, or you’ve been investing for many years, most business owners want to know what the Google Panda update is all about.

That’s because the Panda update is one which crops up time and time again on SEO news websites.

The reason being is the Panda update was not a one-off occurrence, instead it was an algorithm change that is regularly being updated.

The purpose is to weed out websites that try and fool the algorithm into thinking they have implemented quality seo work, when in matter of fact they have not.

So, if you want to learn a thing or two about the Google Panda update, you’ve come to right place.

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Which sorts of websites did the Panda update punish?

In a nutshell if your onsite seo efforts are not white hat, well those websites could be impacted by Panda.

But to be more specific here’s a list of the types of websites that got affected. 

Content thin

Ever landed on a website and it just hasn’t got much text. Perhaps this has even affected a buying decision, for example you may have wanted to purchase a new jumper, but there just wasn’t any information on what material it was made from, or which sizes are available.

Such a page could be deemed as content thin, meaning there’s just not much information. It’s thought that some websites, which were deemed as content thin were impacted by Panda.

Spammy

We all those these types of websites, they try and cut corners, often the business will have gone with an seo agency that charges cheap prices, but the seo is often as equally as cheap.

An example of spammy seo would be this, say you were looking for a skip hire business, yet when you go the website, they have a very long list stating “skip hire + city”- but the website mentions loads of cities or towns.

This is rubbish seo, and often its these sorts of businesses that were affected by Panda.

Duplicated content

Websites that have duplicated content were affected by Panda. For instance, a business may retail a product, say a electronic toothbrush for example, yet instead of writing their own product description, the business may have just copied and pasted from the manufacturer.

A business simply shouldn’t have duplicated content, most seo agencies, including ours think it is far better to write your own product descriptions, and to ensure all other content marketing is original content marketing.

Improving

Some businesses falsely believe that the Panda update was rolled out just once. That’s to say some businesses believe if they haven’t been affected when the update rolled-out, well they must now be home and dry.

However, this is not the case, as Panda is now incorporated into Google’s algorithm, and many experts believe is being improved.

This simply means that Google is constantly weeding out businesses that do not adhere to white hat seo standards.

So, this means just because your digital marketing agency hasn’t implemented low quality seo yet, doesn’t mean that this cant happen in the future.

Therefore, it’s always worth the business having some idea of how Panda works, and making sure if needs be they keep the seo agency in check.

So how should our business be creating content marketing?

This has to be one of the most over used words in SEO, and that word is “quality”. And we appreciate that the word quality today is a pretty vague one, as after all its used to describe everything from sausages to luxury cars.

However, when it comes to content marketing, we mean quality in the following sense:

Is useful

If you put yourself in an seo consultants shoes for just a second, that consultant may be tasked with writing content marketing for many different businesses.

And what can happen is the marketing consultant may be overstretched, which can mean that some marketing agencies create poor quality content marketing.

Often what happens is content is written, yet it created to satisfy a set word count. So you guessed it, 500 words are written but its likely to be a dull read, one which hasn’t got any useful information.

So how do you create better content marketing? Well, that’s simple, instead you create content marketing that will be useful to your target customer.

For example, say you run a business that retails kitchens, you could create content marketing that advises customers on which options allow your customers to save space. For example, there may be additional options that allow customers a place to store their wine bottles, or a system that allows foot items to be rotated, rather than stacked in a cupboard.

This would be useful content marketing, that’s opposed to content marketing that simply attempts to get the business to rank higher for “kitchen retailers”.

Google’s set of questions

This is an interesting article if you wish to learn more about the Google Panda update.

Quality

As mentioned earlier, the main focus when writing content marketing is producing quality work.

That is work which is useful.

Bounce rate

When your business publishes a new blog post, or page on your website, you should monitor that page’s bounce rate.

If a lot of readers bounce straight off the page, meaning they leave more or less straightaway then this can be sign that the content marketing is not useful.

The reason for this is if the blog post was interesting, and offered the answers the person was looking for, then the reader is unlikely to leave the website.

Therefore, your digital marketing agency should aim to reduce your websites bounce rate.

White hat agency

Does your business require help with its SEO? If so, then why not give us a ring? We offer affordable prices, and we only ever implement white hat seo.