Does Google Panda reward Content SEO and inbound marketing?
Posted by Stephen Morris on Wed, Jan 11, 2012
Now that the dust has settled on 2011's Google Panda updates, it make sense to review the direction that Google is heading in from the SEO's perspective.
It seems that Google is increasingly trying to reward those that use straightforward, content SEO techniques. Google rewarding good content and well-connected, authoritative sources is good news for users and marketers.
Choosing your approach to SEO
Whether you're undertaking your own SEO or outsourcing it to an agency, you need to be clear about the techniques and tactics that are going to be used to push your rankings up.
Panda definitely seems to have focused on punishing 'Grey Hat' and 'Black Hat' SEOs - ie. SEOs who use techniques, tricks and 'fake' content to manipulate Google search results. So the Panda update meant drastic drops in the rankings for websites that were using content and link farms to boost their rankings, coming as something of a surprise to JC Penney and Overstock.com in the US.
The Google Panda update and content SEO
When promoting the Panda update on its blog, Google presented the following questions to give SEOs a steer on what the update was intending to achieve.
- Would you trust the information presented in this article?
- Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
- Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
- Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
The inbound marketing approach vindicated?
It seems to me that Google's direction in terms of its algorithm and the practice of inbound marketing are aligned. Aside from the issues of trust, spelling and credit cards, you could reduce Google's list down to the following:
- Does the page provide valuable content that you would share with peers or colleagues?
- Is the content relevant, original and insightful?
- Is the author knowledgeable and enthusiastic? Are they speaking from their own perspective rather than duplicating what has been published elsewhere?
So, inbound marketing practice has been vindicated. Write insightful, original content and present it clearly and Google will help those that need you to find your content. Writing content for people needs to be the focus for SEOs, just like it's the focus for inbound marketers. Google has also started to boost the results of more frequently refreshed content, meaning that "writing your site for SEO" once is no longer enough - you need to be an enthusiastic poster of new information.
It also suggests that social media sharing (presumably biased towards Google+) is going to become a major element in search ranking over the course of 2012.
If you want to know more about the inbound marketing approach to SEO or to talk about how it can increase targeted traffic and leads, contact us now.
[image credit: kunocreative.com]