Google Panda Update Seeks to Punish Inferior Sites

Google has once again tweaked the algorithm that determines search results. This is nothing new. According to the March 14th issue of Time magazine, it does this some 500 times a year. However, some changes are more seismic than others.

This particular change is designed to improve the search experience by giving the top spots to sites with substantial high-quality content and conferred authority through inbound links from high-quality, high-traffic sites. The change punishes sites that have:

• scant content
• little content surrounded by a lot of advertising
• content copied from elsewhere
• multiple inbound links from questionable, low-quality sites

This is worth noting because too many SEO service providers "help" clients by doing a lot of dodgy link-building. This strategy is now officially unhelpful.

In fact, this change reinforces what reputable SEO service providers have been preaching all along: Create relevant content that is helpful to your users on an ongoing basis and work over time to get links from reputable, high-traffic sites. This strategy may be time-consuming and not very sexy, but for all of the algorithm changes that occur over time, it is the one thing that remains constant.