Google “Panda” Algorithm Update
Late February Google was whispering quite loudly about its latest algorithm update which now has a name – Panda.
One the key goals of this algorithm update was to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value for users, sites that copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.” Read more about the full Google algorithm update.
We constantly tell our clients and potential clients that “content is King”, and again this has proved to be correct. Most of our clients have benefited from the recent algorithm changes but some have suffered.
We have to be honest, at Magic Webs we do not take a lot of notice about all the nitty gritty little details that are associated with an algorithm update because we think differently. We decided when we introduced our SEO.SIMPLE.™ ranking package 18 months ago to start thinking like Google. We said to ourselves – what if we thought like Google, then how would Google think? We used to do SEO like so many other SEO companies which was to focus on back-linking and forget about content despite Google ‘shouting’ the message that content was King. But not anymore. Instead, we bit the bullet and created a well-rounded SEO solution that would ensure that our clients would be buffered from the storms of Google algorithm updates. Yet again, our SEO.SIMPLE.™ package is now proving itself as a winning SEO formula.
Our own ranking rose quite a bit in the last fortnight, especially on Google.com. We saw an 18-point leap for our main keyword SEO.
We lifted up in our our main local playground of Google.com.sg quite a bit as well for the keywords Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Optimization.
Panda Algorithm Update Comparison
We have three clients in the corporate gift industry in Singapore. One of those clients emailed us yesterday asking why their ranking had recently dropped.
We looked closely at all three of our corporate gift clients and noticed the following: One client rose significantly in the ranking results recently (let’s call them client A) and two dropped quite a bit (let’s call them clients B and C). C dropped off the first page all together.
Client A:
Client A rose a lot in the search engine results (SERPS). They have been with us for over 18 months and have received content from us for their blog and purchased our Blast Backs™ for back-linking for over a year. Additionally, they have never had any other search engine optimisation company work on their site, so all their back-links are unique, content-based links with no low quality blog comment links or cheap and nasty directory links. All our back-links to client sites use content-based back-links from real functioning websites. We do not tend to put too much content on article farm sites like EzineArticles, this having suffered major losses in ranking position lately.
Client B:
Their ranking position did take quite a hit and dropped low enough for the client to email us and ask what happened. This client is a fairly new client with us. Another SEO company did their original ranking work. That old company did a good job in terms of ranking position because they put Client B on the first page of Google for some quite competitive keywords. However, because Client B now has a lot of back-links that we have not created, the recent algorithm changes could have affected the sites that these links are sitting on. As a result, Client B’s ranking dropped significantly.
We did reassure this client that content focus is the only way forward and that their position will recover as we place more content on their site as well as build better content-based back-links using unique content on third party sites.
Client C:
This client was the surprise for us seeing that they have been with us for two years now and no one except us has worked on their SEO. This client could be the “embarrassing one” for us, unless we looked closer at what the recent Panda algorithm update focused on, namely:
- Having low quality content on the site can affect the whole site ranking
- Having a lot of pages that are ‘content thin’
- Content is poorly written or pages poorly structured
This client has all of the above points on their site. We have added custom written content to their site for over a year but this client has added a lot of their own content that is poorly structured and poorly written.
Fortunately for this client they signed up with us last week to reconstruct their website from the ground up (we now do web development). We expect that within two weeks after the rebuild their ranking should rise again.
What’s the moral of the story? Content will always be king for Google, no matter how the algorithms change. So unless you’re doing content-based SEO, then you can expect to be caught by surprise with rankings dropping overnight or as soon as Google launches a new algorithm update, perhaps the Praying Mantis next time?
