If you’ve been hearing about Google Panda and Google Penguin, but still aren’t sure what they are, just know that it’s Google’s way of saying, “Stop trying to trick us. Give us the good stuff.”
If you’re not a search engine optimization wonk, I’ll explain it this way:
Two years ago, you could win Google searches if you had more links pointing back to your site than anyone else for those same keywords.
One year ago, Google was tired of that, and rolled out the Panda algorithm so it only looked at valuable links — links that went from a site about a keyword to another site about that same keyword.
For example, if I have a blog about tennis and I link to your blog about tennis, Google thinks that’s a valuable site. But if I have a blog with thousands of links on it and no common theme, and I link to your blog about tennis, Google thinks that’s crap.
Two years ago, having a lot of links, no matter what or where, was important. Now, Google is on to that. They hate it, and are fighting against it. And your site will be devalued if you pull that stunt.
So what DOES Google want?
Content.
Valuable content.
Rich, well-written, important, thought leading, world changing content.
They want stuff that engages people, interests them, teaches them, entertains them. They want something that people will stick around to read and share with their friends.
Google can tell if your stuff is interesting, educational, and entertaining, not by what you wrote, but by how long people stick around.
If it’s crap, they won’t stay. If it’s good, they’ll read it for a while. And if they read it for a while, Google will pronounce it good, and your content will rise to the top of the search engine rankings.
So your job is to write good, informative content, day after day, week after week, month after month.
It’s a long-term strategy that’s going to take a while. It’s not a switch you can flip and have the become all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a handle you have to crank over and over.
The problem is, most people don’t want to turn the crank after a while.
So the good companies, the successful companies, are the ones who can provide good content on a regular basis that people want to read.
Can you do it? Do you have the skills? Can you create stellar, well-written content that people are hungry for?
And can you do it again tomorrow?
That’s the real trick. To be able to create high quality content again and again, without fail, to meet the raging appetites of those people who are interested in what you have to say.
If you can do that, you’ll win. If you can do that, you’ll outperform the companies that are still living and mostly dying by the cheap backlinks.
