What Google's Panda/Farmer Update Means for Your Business
15:04, Thursday, 21 April 2011
With the recent rollout of Google's Panda/Farmer algorithm changes, Your SEO Consultant decided to look into the most important factors for business owners and webmasters, to put into plain English the implications of these sweeping changes to the ranking system. Summarised below is what we've gleaned from our tests:
- Domain names are now considered even more important in terms of keyword placement. If your domain contains keywords relevant to your business, products and services, you'll be in good shape. If not, perhaps it's time to consider some mirror sites, that make use of keyword targeted names; and which can drive more referral traffic to your main site.
- .com extensions have seemingly been given higher priority in the United States, making it even more important to use localised domain extensions. Since the advent of Google Places, it has been even more imperative to have a .co.uk extansion for a UK business, for example, and Panda provides another reason to do so. For globalised or "glocal" companies, you may find that your chances of attracting traffic and business from the US has increased. Happy days!
- There has been a perhaps-overstated crackdown on "Content Farms" and “Scraper” sites; those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. If you have used an SEO company or outsourced organisation to build backlinks for your site, you may have seen a drop in the number of backlinks credited to you. This is an indicator that your chosen resource has used a scraper site or content/link farm.
The real impact is still being assessed, and the sweeping and widespread changes in ranking have yet to be reported. One thing's for sure; every business should be aware of the methods by which their chosen SEO partners are creating links and promotional content, so as to ensure the greatest possible benefit for their efforts, and your money!
Tags: seo,google