Search marketing: How has Google’s Panda algorithm update altered the industry?
As part of The Drum’s special report on search marketing, we speak to a number of agencies operating in the space to gain an insight into the key issues surrounding this heady topic.
In a series of features, we’ll be looking at the industry’s responses to the questions we posed, to determine the challenges and trends facing search marketing in 2012.Here, we’re asking search marketers their views on the recent changes to Google’s algorithm and the resulting impact on the search marketing industry. How has Google’s Panda algorithm update altered search marketing, and how can marketers ‘fix’ Panda?Kevin Gibbons, director of strategy, SEOptimiseThe panda algorithm update, in a nutshell, was about penalising websites with low quality content – and rewarding those with high-quality content. That means that if you have a site with 100,000+ indexed pages of average content – it’s likely that it won’t be ranking as highly right now as it was a year to 18-months ago. The only real way to fix this is to have a clean-up. SEO used to be a case of the more content and pages you had, the more keyword opportunities and traffic you will have. This really isn’t true anymore. So my recommendation would be to review those pages which aren’t generating any traffic and either rewrite them in to higher quality content, or delete and redirect them onto relevant pages within your site.Likewise, when link building, don’t over-optimise anchor text. If you have 90% of your links to a page using a competitive keyword, it’s very unlikely to be a natural profile and it’s a clear sign to Google. Mix it up, keep it branded – and again, maybe it’s time for a clean-up – if you’ve got a spammy link profile, it’s possible your effort will be best spent in removing low-quality links, as opposed to building higher quality links (of course, you should do that too though!).With the rollout of Google authorship, this is a signal of writer quality. For example, if you have a blogger who has an authoritative Google+ profile, then that is going to benefit you in organic search, as Google will trust content written from the individual source, as opposed to the site it’s coming from.Gavin Boyd, SEO manager, Equator There is no doubt that the over optimisation penalty and the recently released web spam algorithm update has certainly sent a few shockwaves through the SEO industry with the web spam algorithm update alone said to be affecting just over 3 per cent of English Google queries.It could be argued that historically, some SEOs focussed on quantity, however these changes to the ranking algorithm will reward (or at least are less likely to punish) those sites that have unique and quality content, which should lead to a better user experience. There is no way to ‘fix’ Panda; however there are guidelines and practises that if followed, can help webmasters avoid penalisation, such as:- Provide users with unique quality content
- Add unique quality content regularly
- Have significantly than a 50% ratio in brand related links
- Ensure the strongest five anchor text links pointing to your site are brand related
- Only gain links from relevant/quality sources
- Take a multi-signal approach – it’s not all about the links, not all about social signals, not all about content, but it is all about getting that mix of multiple quality signals that Google needs to see.
- Engaging content – content needs to be more than just keywords. Content needs to be engaging and trustworthy if it hopes to be Panda proof and shared socially by customers and taste setters.
- Click through optimisation – Google’s results are now far beyond 10 blue links and as the engine rolls out greater personalisation, contextual, multi-media and author integration there are significant wins to be had by deploying SEO techniques that can increase the amount of qualified clicks a search result enjoys even if its average position remains the same.
- Voice – The ability to say “Look at this engaging content” to customers; the ability to reach out to a blogger or a site owner with some interesting news, or to have a dialogue with a taste setter, etc. SEO campaigns should be designed to work with whatever Voice the brand or the agency can muster and to help increase Voice for the next campaign or round of engagement.
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