Last month, several posts came out, stipulating the demise and fear of webmasters about the release of a new Google algorithm and the drop of search ranking of websites considered to be content farms.
I have an account at Ezinearticles and other article directory sites. However, I haven;t submitted one post at Ezinearticles.com, which is kind of ironic to me. The thing is that those websites considered content farms have exprienced significant drop in search ranking in SERP’s and consequently, have affected their traffic count.
With this algorithm shift in how Google indexes links with contents for display in search engine result pages, content marketers have been faced with a challenge.
What does this now imply? Wiill content marketers particularly bloggers be affected tremendously on this change?
Though the explanation from Google is vague, citing confidentiality in its algorithm system, the search engine giant mentions relevancy in quality contents for bigger probability to get indexed and found in search engine result pages conspicuously. This is just the way I interpret their explanation and it somehow helps me believe that Google is prioritizing those who produce quality contents over those who are just doing it for SEO.
I believe that content authors, particularly bloggers should take into consideration their readers, then search engine next. If you are blogger, it is not anymore about you and what you post— although revealing some facts and tidbits that may be of interest to readers is also a factor– the views of the readers are more important. With the change in algorithm in Google’s way of spider-webbing links and contents of sites and blogs, quality bloggers have now an edge or, perhaps, their contents will be in the priority list.
Now, how should bloggers deal with this?
Bloggers can do these steps:
1. Create quality posts and contents on your blogs.
2. Rewrite posts that you consider crap and change them into stellar quality.
3. Promote your post in the social media.
I think, the third step can be valuable to bloggers.If you have a Twitter account, then make it sure that the shortened url of your blog post with the killer headline as the post title is tweeted. Google Realtime provides opportunities for those in the social media to get found in the search engine. Search users must also use Google Realtime to check on the tweets with the url linking to the blog posts or to the site with the information of the certain keyword. This Google service is relevant for those who want updated information about a keyword search.
Now, back to the real topic on hand and the question: is Google Panda harmful?
I can’t help but find the humor on this title. It seems that Google uses a big bear that is seemingly adorable yet dangerous when provoked– an animal that is almost vegetarian but intimidating because of its size. Almost vegetarian because I just learned that it also eats meat occassionally but its diet is 99% bamboo.
Google Panda is the name of the algorithm in which the Panda may seem to refer to the search engine giant and in which it only stores links it indexes from sites and blogs with quality contents. And perhaps, just like a Panda in which a favorite staple is the bamboo despite its enormous size, Google eats in links with quality contents no matter how little the blog or site where those contents are originated for inclusion in the first SERP’s. At least, that’s how I interpret the way Google Panda works.
But I think the sites that get the most benefits from this change are the big blogs– those blogs that really provide the best contents and not the article directory sites that just store in articles for article marketers’ sakes.
And so, the answer from the question would be this: It may bring harm to content farms SEO-wise but it could bring good change to blogs and sites with quality contents. I think, I have already experienced this on my other blog, Bjorn Bernales, with more than 100% surge in traffic in just days.
How about you, have you experienced the effects of Google Panda? How does it fair so far?
