Good content suits the Google Panda

08 Oct Good content suits the Google Panda

When Google introduced its Panda algorithm to the online world in 2011, the panic in the market was apparent. More than 15 months down the line, it’s evident that the Panda update has been a blessing for all users out there. The search is filtered, results more relevant and the content out there more reliable.

Online companies that were relying on content mills to create spun content have had reasons to worry ever since Google launched its new algorithm. The Google Panda had set parameters to separate good content from rubbished content. At the same time, companies that are here for serious business took the introduction of Google Panda to organic search seriously. And if the experience of online companies over the last 15 months is anything to go by, the results have been amusing and reassuring.

At the same time, Google introduced image and video optimization to search, which made pages online more conducive. There was no more of the simple copy and paste on disorganized templates. Now, companies were focussing on creating content that was well written, engaging, user-friendly and answered user queries online.

A number of websites went all out to redesign their pages, make them technically sound and to create meaningful content. While this has by no means meant the end of content mills, it has created a market for good content. So the next time you search online, you will not be led to astray search results. You are more likely to be led to the kind of page you were looking for.

Say, if you wanted to find out what were the good dining out places in New York (in the United States), you could easily be fooled into a page that talks about a New York restaurant in a small town of a foreign country in another continent of the world. Simply because they went all out on keyword-laden pages.

With the Google Panda, websites that throw up irrelevant content simply based on their keyword density lost their charm. Websites that hosted duplicate, weak, thin or template content were also pulled down by search results. While this also meant a loss for some relevant websites, it benefited the end user. Rehashed and spun content was out of the way. Thin product reviews and blogs were out of the way. Targeted pages with user-friendly content layout was in.

So why did some of the good sites suffer? It did not hurt page results but domain results. When you are a fairly large site with millions of pages of content, the quality of that content often varies. So if you had some good content and a large amount of bad content, the Google Panda made sure the entire domain was hurt. This resulted in some companies witnessing a sudden fall in traffic.

For those who invested in good content and technological development benefited from the developments on the Google Panda. Good content that spoke to the end user was being identified by Google. This is now an acknowledged fact and companies are reviving their content strategy.

With the bigger players, content teams are working hard every day to understand search results dependant on how they are creating and changing their content every day. Companies that are willing to invest in development are seeing greater results. Just as the Google Panda tries to understand us, content managers are also familiarizing themselves with the Panda every day.

Read here to understand more about writing good content.

Read here to access our special on How to Recover from Bad Rankings with Content?