If you have been a webmaster for a few years, you probably thought you understood the basics of search engine optimization. You had to produce quality content, use the right keywords, and get quality links pointing to your site if you wanted to rank highly in the search engines. While this is still true to a degree, recent algorithm changes at Google have completely changed the way that webmasters handle their search engine optimization. Last year, the Panda update came out, and completely changed the way that sites rank in the search engines. Then this year, another algorithm update known as Penguin made changes as well. Both of these updates affected millions of sites across the Web, and they changed the way that webmasters do SEO.
What Did Panda Do?
Panda was an algorithm update that was aimed at knocking low quality websites out of the search engine rankings. When it was initially announced, Google talked about getting rid of “content farms” and other spam sites that didn’t really provide that much value to search engines. Many different factors went into this algorithm update, as a way to tell which sites were low-quality and which ones actually had useful information. Most of the sites that were damaged with this update were either content farms, low-quality spam blogs, or content sites that didn’t have quality content. This update officially put webmasters on notice that they better bring their “A” game to the table in regards to content creation. You can’t cover your page with ads, and a few sentences of content, and then hope to rank highly in Google. They wanted to see some good content above-the-fold, and they want it to be useful for human visitors to the site. Click here for more info on following the new rules in SEO game.