The Easy Way to Beat Google's Panda Update

Sep 2, 2011
Andrew Perry

A Writer Bangs Away On the Her Keyboard. - Search Engine People Blog, Creative Commons

Google Search is the most used search engine, and there's a good reason for this - Google has high standards.

The Panda updates are an attempt by Google to favor high-quality, original content. Google hosts about 65 percent of all search inquiries. To put this into perspective, the second most popular search engine is Yahoo, at a distant 16 percent. (Hitwise.com) Obviously, anyone interested in having their articles read will want them to be easily found on Google.

The strategy for becoming ranked high on any search engine is called search engine optimization, or SEO. The key to SEO today is to actually care about the subject matter and thus create quality content.

Google’s Goal for Search Engine Users

Above all, Google wants its users to have a good experience. This is what makes their company number one in search engine use.

If, for example, a concerned pet owner worried about his dog’s flea problem searches for “flea control,” and instead comes across a porn site with popups and a huge list of keywords, this counts as a bad user experience. Another awful experience is finding an article about a subject, but with such poor content that reading it is a waste of time. Finally, if a pet owner finds an article that may be useful but was stolen from someone else, the integrity of Google degrades because the incentive to write new, original articles also diminishes.

It is incidents like these that have led Google to implement the Panda updates.

Dealing With the Panda

Matt Cuts and Amit Singhal, engineers at Google, were recently interviewed by Wired.com. (Levy) These two are among the insiders who designed Panda. They hinted at what type of articles will be successful under the Panda updates. It’s really pretty simple, too.

The best way to get high rankings is:

Caring more about the subject, or about writing, then getting hits. Passion shows up in the quality of the article.
Don’t over-optimize. Keywords are fine, but don’t target too tightly around a specific keyword.
Publish high-value, original content. Panda might not be able to find all the sites that steal from other articles, but Google’s plan is to eventually be able to do so.
Make sure the article’s web page loads fast. Remove bloated codes, compress or resize images, and use caching plug-ins to speed up the loading process.
Use social networking sites – the more links back to the article, the more successful it will be. Use these sites to connect to people more naturally, rather than spamming people.
As much as possible, link out to other relevant articles that offer great information. One or two links is probably all one needs.