Stay In Control of the Jungle by Understanding Panda and Penguin

Keeping your website at the top of the list of search engine results is imperative to helping it survive. Unless you already have a strong customer base that can sustain you, gaining new customers is essential to keeping you out of the red. Many companies have used SEO services in order to increase their search engine rankings. In the time since this technique was developed, Google has worked to ensure that quality sites retain the highest ratings by marking spam and low quality sites. The first update that Google used to keep this high standard was known as Panda.
How Panda Works
The Panda update specifically targeted sites that were of lower quality and were not offering any value to search engine users. Content farms were the sites that were hit the hardest by this update. In the past, publishers would submit the same article to several different farms to get extra links. The Panda update enabled Google to go through the site and if enough the pages were marked as low quality, the entire site would take a hit.
Panda is run at Google's discretion. If you work to improve your site, you may not immediately see the rewards until Google runs the filter again. The following tips can help you to ensure that your site is always of the highest quality and avoid being hit with this update.
  • Avoid articles that are shallow
  • Don't post articles that include redundant information and statements
  • Watch for spelling or factual errors in the content
  • Use well edited articles
  • Only use sites that you would bookmark or recommend to a friend
By working hard to only post high quality content that is well written and well researched on your site, you can avoid being hard hit by the Panda update.
How Penguin Works
Google developed this update in order to address the problem of keyword stuffing. Google has recently worked to crack down especially hard on link spam, and Penguin was developed as a way to do this. Avoid buying links from low quality sites or sites that have the same anchor text. These things will get you flagged by Penguin quickly and hurt your rankings in the search engine results.
We discovered that Penguin is likely targeting the following areas hardest.
  • Sites with the same anchor text
  • Aggressive linking
  • Exact match domain overuse
  • Blog spam
  • Article marketing that is low quality
Updating Your Site Effectively
The most important thing you can do to increase traffic to your website is to only use high quality content on your website that is optimized for search engines. If your company is buried on page five of the search results, you will be hard pressed to come up with new customers. I believe that investing in content that is well written, well researched and well put together can mean the difference between a flailing small business and a thriving one. The more money and time you invest into your website, the more likely your business is to succeed. Avoid being hard hit by Panda and Penguin updates by creating solid content and links that will bring customers to your site. Update old pages and create new ones that will draw the interest of search engine users.
Many companies have used SEO services in order to increase their search engine rankings. In the time since this technique was developed, Google has worked to ensure that quality sites retain the highest ratings by marking spam and low quality sites. The first update that Google used to keep this high standard was known as Panda.

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