Are you writing web content and want to run and hide in the nearest stand of bamboo when you see a Panda? If you are Pandaphobic, then the following information should ease your mind; in fact, it might just make you happy to learn that Google recently released the 24th update to Panda 4.0 that the industry has nevertheless dubbed Panda 4.1. The intent of this update is to improve the quality of content on Internet sites and give small and medium-size sites the opportunity to earn higher ratings if they offer high-quality content.
So, what is high-quality content according to Panda 4.1?
Panda 4.1 Winners and Losers
Losers
Site owners most affected by this latest update in a way that causes traffic to decrease are owners of:
- Music lyric sites,
- Health information sites (such as drug information sites),
- Game sites,
- Any site with infrequent updates or content changes
The cause of this is that there are infrequent updates to the content and the content is dry. This is the nature of these sites, but they clearly meet the definition by Google of unoriginal or low-quality work. After all, aspirin is aspirin and many sites use the same terminology.
Winners
The winners owing improved traffic to the Panda 4.1 update are small and medium-sized sites with rich and unique content. Sites with content that adds value to the user. One of the signals that Google uses to decide a site ranking is time spent on the site and its pages.
You Can Find Winning Content
Have writers define a customer problem and describe how your products or services solve that problem. It is meeting the audience’s needs and not those of your company that makes for good content. Make sure that, as the site owner, you help writers use the following points as a guide. The writing on your site will wow the Panda.
- When ordering content for your site, publishers can help keep their writers out of the bamboo thicket by recommending that every page of content have at least 300 words.
- Google has always campaigned against duplicate content. Make sure everything you publish is unique by running your writer’s piece through Copyscape or Duplichecker, before publishing. Informational content needs supporting links when you use material from supporting sites for your content.
- Caution is the watchword for keyword density. Avoid keyword duplication, instead use long-tail keywords and synonyms. The helps you offer extra content to your readers and to Google.
- Use images, video, and sound to offer variety on your pages — just make sure these things are relevant to your topic and useful to your readers. Gratuitous content enrages the Panda and he will maul you for putting it on the Internet, ranking the page so only the occasional low searcher for Hades will see it.
- Make sure your writer provides content for your niche. His or her research should link to the site where it was obtained to give credibility to information.
Recipe for Panda Feed
Keeping your content compliant with Panda 4.1 and earlier Panda updates is not difficult. Useful, concise page content of 300 or more words is the first ingredient in friendly Panda feed. Add some interesting relevant images, video, and sound as side dishes and offer supporting links for dessert. Discard stale content frequently and replace it with new content. Panda will be happy with your site and award your pages with more weight when ranking.
As a freelance writer, Alan E spends most of the day writing, unless he gets stuck. When that happens, he bounces steals ideas off from his three-year old Australian Cattle Dog, Jake. Jake has special knowledge in the topic of this post and, to date, has ripped gently chewed one ear, one leg, and one eye off his very own Panda. (Bio by Jake.)
