There was a lot of excitement about content quality at the start of the year when Google rolled out its Panda algorithm update internationally. Some of that excitement has died down, but if you’re a regular participant in SEO forums you’ll see that content is still a major topic in the search engine optimisation industry. This is because Panda is still being tweaked by Google, and many sites are still being caught out.
Google has been releasing an update for Panda every four weeks or so, with the occasional gap that’s a bit longer, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about this. So far, there have been five updates, not all of which have been carried out internationally. Each time, there have been a few sites that have suffered, some of which had gone unscathed during previous updates. Although there have been a few odd surprises, the common theme has been content.
At the start of this year, there were a lot of sites that posted thin content on a regular basis. It was generally accepted that as long as SEO content was about something, and didn’t overuse keywords or insert them in an unrelated way, the content was likely to satisfy Google. Panda changed that, and it looks like the change is permanent.
It’s important to remember that Panda’s repercussions aren’t over. The days of technical-focussed SEO are over. Your search engine optimisation plan must encompass regular, unique, high-quality and insightful content if you want it to succeed.
