The Google Panda and Penguin Strategy – How to Overcome It

In February 2011, Google introduced the Google Panda, a ranking algorithm. Basically Panda was introduced to prevent sites with bad content from the high ranking list and to provide good quality sites with what was rightly their ranking. As you can well imagine, this saw many websites being pushed back in the Google pages. The Google Panda has been updated more than 22 times. And Panda’s aim is steadfast in ensuring good content is ranked higher.

In April 2012 one more algorithm update that hit below the belt of the SEO expertise was Google’s Penguin. The idea behind this update was quite straight forward; it ordered the penalization and decrease of ranking of sites that did not follow the Webmaster Guidelines put forward by Google.

So what is the other way out to take care of and steer clear of the Panda and Penguin penalty? Are people actually aware of what quality content is? 

Change may be difficult and not much fun either, but there are times when it is imperative for us to get going to beat Google. Given below are some points that will give you an idea of what Panda and Penguin consider bad content.

• If user experience is poor: Content that is uninteresting and not informative and doesn’t succeed in offering any values are categorized as bad content.
• Replication: This is even today a harmful feature that Panda can penalize
• Filling content with too many keywords is yet another harmful feature
• Archaic content: When the content on a website has not been revised since ages and is therefore idle
• Providing fake links via link farms: According to Google’s policy, no individual or false means should interfere when building links. It should be a natural procedure. Here again content is vital and websites that have good, pertinent content should, as far as business goes, naturally create links that will turn out to be strong and more valuable than unnaturally created links. It may not be very easy to point out what a natural link is, however the fact is that by and large all of us, as visitors to websites, connect with matter that is real, genuine and strong. Exclusive content that provide better references will automatically create natural links.

This then leads us to what you will need to do to surmount and prevent the Panda resentment and the fury of the Penguin.

• Write unique content
• Be innovative when writing content or getting it written
• Make sure that whatever is written attracts visitors and links in the natural process
• Provide better quality material
• Ensure your content is up to date and relevant
• Prevent overdoing keywords; typically keywords should remain at 2 - 4% of the articles to attract traffic to your site
• Provide appropriate titles, sub-headings, paragraphs and bullet points
• Try offering longer articles; lengthy content is gaining popularity and significance. So increase matter in your content
• Remember to stick to matter on your site, do not stray; if you are writing about something to do with cooking, stick to ingredients, cooking instructions, cooking tips and recipes and the like.
• Content should be appealing as well as educative. The crux of the matter is that  users must enjoy reading your stuff
• It would be in your interest to do good research before you write content. It would help to be authentic and provide what visitors are looking for
• Utilize illustrations, examples and graphics lavishly
• Content should be on trendy current topics

Now elucidating a little more on what was mentioned above, the next question we should think about is how you can get more readers for blogs. The point is when you aim at attracting traffic the objective should be to convert that traffic into readers.

One way to attract traffic is through guest posting, meaning you publish content or articles for other blog sites. This can considerably increase followers for you. Via guest posting you can build a brand and back links. Today guest posting is quite well known. Other than just publishing blogs you also stand to make an income. Another point to consider is to create content that is always relevant. In fact, it is called evergreen content; some content never gets outdated or archaic, this is what you should write to top the search engine lists. Actually this is a very efficient and sensible strategy.

Now let’s see what factors constitute smart content strategy:

• References are one of the significant features of this sort of content
• You then have step-by-step instructions
• Frequently Asked Questions, more commonly known as FAQs
• Top tips

Armed with all the above points and strategies, go ahead and get ready to face Panda and Penguin, beating them at their own game!