Unless you work for Google, do SEO, or are really on top of your marketing, you probably haven’t heard of Panda. It’s the most recent evolution of the Google web crawlers—those things that decide where your website is going to show up in a search. Learning just a little about these changes can give you a huge advantage over your competition.
How will understanding Panda give me an advantage?
You’ll have a better idea of who to hire for your online marketing and SEO
You’ll know when they are marketing the right way online, and when they are still using strategies based on older optimization models (which are no longer as effective).
And for those with a limited budget, you will be able to do more of your marketing and optimization in-house the right way, saving a whole lot of money.
So what’s changed?
1. Content is now even more important. The words on your page have always been a huge factor when it comes to placement and which keywords and phrases will take browsers to your site, but now this gets even more precedence.
2. Auto-generated content will hurt your site. Google has put more emphasis on ferreting out content which has been auto-generated. Creating tons and tons of content through these programs is something usually done by affiliate marketers, often without the business even knowing it. The business will see a slight bump quickly and think everything is fine, but Google catches on even faster now and not only will they put the site back where it was before, they will often penalize the site even further. Be sure whoever you hire is not using auto-generated content.
3. Quality is more important than quantity. There was a time years ago when businesses could outsource hundreds of articles about their product or service for super cheap, put up some links, and get results. The problem has always been that these super cheap articles and materials are also horribly written. You get what you pay for basically. Google’s made it so you get virtually nothing for all of these poorly written pieces. You’re better off hiring a professional for quality content even if it costs a little more.
4. Hyphenated domains probably aren’t penalized. Hyphens are often used when common domain names have all been taken. It was believed these hyphenated names did not perform as well, but it’s never been confirmed by Google. There seems to be more and more evidence that using hyphens when needed isn’t going to hurt your searchability… just-don’t-over-do-it-prob-ab-ly.