As they often do, Google have recently changed their search engine algorithm to keep up with the new ways that people are searching for things. Many years ago, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) was quite simple and a large jump away from where it is now. Back then, Google bumped websites up the radar by the amount of web pages linking back to the site, regardless of the quality of those links or the amount of content on them.
With social media blowing up in recent years and more people using and connecting through the internet on a daily basis, Google started rolling out different algorithms that focussed also on the quality of these links (and also penalised sites that used low quality links) so that spam and websites that didn’t deserve the top placement were moved.
An algorithm update, Panda 4.0, was introduced in May 2014 and instead of simply looking at all the links, it focussed heavily on the user’s experience and if the website had high quality content – unique, new and not stuffed with keywords. Long gone are the days where you can automatically send out links to your website without any content or cares (known as black hat SEO – the unsustainable and bad kind of SEO) and in comes the well-written content.
Spam is one of the biggest annoyances on the internet today and Google wants to tackle it head on. Imagine seeing a new comment on your blog, getting your hopes up about people becoming interested in your content, and then finding out that it’s an automated comment trying to sell you knock-off sunglasses and linking back to their (very) questionable website. It’s not a nice feeling, is it? This is the reason why Panda 4.1 has been introduced, just a few months after 4.0 in September 2014 – but what does it entail?
Panda 4.1, in a nutshell, hates spam and poor content. Any irrelevant, redundant and ‘spammy’ content that’s on the internet is supposed to be removed from Google’s index through this update. However, this isn’t something that’s new to the SEO world but the interesting part of 4.1 is that it’s the smaller, higher quality websites that are apparently set to benefit, as opposed to the larger ones – a perfect opportunity for small to medium sized businesses to embark on a new SEO strategy.
Basing their update on feedback from both web-masters and users, Google have said that they’ve been able to discover signals that will allow Panda to identify bad quality content a lot more precisely. Although the 4.1 update is only a small iteration, it has made quite the impact to specific websites that never bothered to ensure their content was perfect.
Due to the constant changes that the SEO world experiences, it’s almost impossible for an independent business owner to do themselves. Content writing will take up a large portion of your time, but it is also difficult to know exactly what to do with it once written.
Rather than stressing out and using your spare time to write, research and DIY-SEO you can contact us. We can help you with your SEO strategy so that you get the traffic, engagement and most importantly customers that you deserve.