Google’s aim to produce high quality search results led it to change its search algorithm; the first release in February 2011 was called the Google Panda. The aim was to display good quality search results rather than low quality content from content farms.
Now what are these content farms which Google is up against?
Content farms are firms that employ writers to produce low quality articles that are created with just about the right keywords that are needed for a search engine to discover them. Their aim is to get traffic generated on a page so that the user is able to see the advertisements therein.
As described by Kevin Morris at the Daily Dot, “To content farms, quality and utility aren’t important. All that matters is your Google click-through—that brief moment when your eyes hover over their ads. The farms deflate the value of the entire Web through the sheer volume of their junk. They’re just another form of spam.”
So what Google did was altered it’s algorithm so that the best quality results appeared first and the low-quality ones (that used to appear above just because of having a way with keywords) appeared further down.
Google pretty much won the battle against the farms, with the ratings of these spamming sites going down the line.
So what search engine optimizers of today need to do is pay closer attention to on site and off site content and make it more unique. Not just that, related content needs to be researched and well analyzed so that Google rates the page high. If content is copied or is keyword stuffed that takes you down the rating.Acquiring more customers online requires better marketing practices than before, with catchy content and tag lines.
The best practice therefore is to do optimal SEO, over optimization also makes the page ‘look bad’.
Google has continually updated the algorithm publishing release after release of Panda versions in an attempt to give users the best results when they search. Hence, employing professionals to do the SEO has become all the more important since they know about this algorithm change. If old practices are still employed it will take ratings down rather than up.
