Posts Tagged ‘quality’

Does The Panda Update Really Matter?

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

Early this year, in February, Google rocked the Internet when it updated its search algorithms and slapped down some very authoritative sites in their respective niches. Some of the biggest slap downs occurred in the article directory niche. The top article directories lost tons of rankings within minutes along with traffic and revenue. What happened?

The Panda Update, as it is called, was designed to target high profile sites with low quality content. And it did its job.

While the update was designed to target large sites, it also affected many smaller sites. Many sites with a large number of pages with just a little bit of content – even though that content followed Google’s quality guidelines – lost a lot of traffic when their low content pages fell sharply in the rankings. While we can question the fairness of the update, I would like to say for the record that I think the hype surrounding Panda since it was implemented has largely been unnecessary.

SEOs are coming out of the woodwork now to “educate” the rest of us how to ensure our sites aren’t affected by Panda and future similar updates. One author cautions that Google plans to add 550 “improvements” to the update.

Here’s why I think much of this is hype: Even if you followed Google’s guidelines, if you thought you were going to dominate the SERPs because you

  1. Added thousands of new pages with less than 200 words of content to your website;
  2. Included pages on your site that were optimized for the same keywords but that promoted different products;
  3. And relied solely on linkbuilding strategies to push your website up in the rankings despite its low quality content

then you weren’t really interested in producing the best content for your niche. And that’s what Google is looking for.

As a searcher, I want to know that I can Google a topic and receive a fair number of web pages near the top of the SERPs that are going to actually provide answers to my query. Low quality content pages don’t do that.

So the moral of this lesson is, Don’t chase the algorithms. Instead, focus on producing top quality content for your niche. If you do that, then you shouldn’t have to worry about being slapped down.

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Posted in SEO for Small Business | 3 Comments »

How To Think Like Google

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

SEOBook.com has an interesting article about content mills dated today. There is certainly some food for thought there and it’s something that I’ve considered. Most small businesses don’t have to worry about being a content mill, but some may have to worry about using them.

If you purchase content for your website from a freelance copywriter then you are responsible for its quality. Do you have quality guidelines?

I’d suggest that, as a minimum, you review Google’s quality guidelines and make yours at least as strict. If you really want quality, make your guidelines stricter. The bottom line on content is it has to be good enough to pass Google’s muster, and that’s not really saying much.

The real test of quality is whether or not your content addresses a serious need of someone who is looking for answers in your niche. If it does then it might be quality content, but if it doesn’t then it likely isn’t quality at all.

All SEO and content production efforts should involve a process of thinking like Google. The search engine wants to deliver quality content to searchers on every topic that a search could be made on. Your job as webmaster of your small business website is to make your content of such quality that Google will offer it up on its search results pages. To do that sufficiently, you have to think as if you are Google. Ask yourself, What do searchers want?

If you can answer that one question then you’ve got most of your content problems bagged before you start.

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Posted in SEO for Small Business | 2 Comments »

Don’t Stress Over Low Quality Back Links

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

If you wonder what you should do about low quality back links, or links from low quality websites or bad neighborhoods, don’t stress too much. There’s not a lot you can do other than write to the webmaster and request that your link be removed. But that’s rarely necessary.

The search engines know you cannot control who links to you. They don’t generally discredit bad links. They may not count them, but they won’t penalize you for being linked to. That frees up your mind to worry about other details.

Back links are something that everyone covets. And most webmasters want the best back links they can get. But don’t get too infatuated with back links. You’d be better off planning and creating fresh new content. That’s what the search engines really love.

The only worry you should have about back links is whether you are being aggressive enough in pursuing them for your site.

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Posted in link building | No Comments »

Small Business Blogging: Why Quality Vs. Quantity Isn’t The Issue

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

When it comes to small business blogging, there is no right way or wrong way. There are effective and less effective ways. And what I mean by that is you can use certain strategies in your blog that are proven and effective in helping you grow your business while ignoring such principles can cost you in the long run.

One of the things that I like to tell people about blogging is this: Post to your blog every day. Even if all you post is “Have a great day!”

There are two ways of thinking on this and I’ll tell you why I think the way I do. The first way of thinking is that quality is more important than quantity. The quality people say you don’t have to post every day as long as you post quality material because your readers are more interested in quality posts than they are frequent posts.

Unless you blog to a small niche audience, this argument doesn’t hold water. Maybe your Marine biologist friends interested only in the mating habits of California stingrays will prefer that you write infrequently and only when you discover something they didn’t already know, but if you are writing for a small business that wants to attract customers then frequent posts are better even if you don’t write your best material every day.

Of course, I’m not saying you should sacrifice quality. You don’t necessarily have to give up quality just because you practice quantity. Some bloggers I know post two or three times a day. If you have the time to do that then I’d say it’s better than posting once a day. Once a day is obviously better than once a week. The reasons why are these:

  • More frequent posts mean more chances to get indexed with the search engines because every blog post is counted as a separate web page
  • When you SEO your blog posts correctly then each blog post becomes an SEOd web page
  • By offering more chances to read your insights, your customers can pick and choose the content they want to read; they don’t have to read every post just because you write every post

It isn’t a question of quantity versus quality. It’s really a matter of making sure that you give your readers more opportunities to do business with you. If you open the doors of your automotive shop once a week you won’t get as much business as you will if you are open every day. And that’s my way of thinking.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

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Posted in Blogging for Small Business | 1 Comment »