Thanks to Google’s zoological approach to SEO best practices, Pandas and Penguins have successfully done their part to clean up search results.
And, although most link farms and other black hat techniques have fallen by the wayside since the algorithms made their introduction, Panda and Penguin are still just as effective as ever.
So, with keyword morals in mind, here are just a few reasons why Google’s Panda and Penguin are still keeping blogs and websites honest:
Quality Content is Still King
No matter which way you look at it, whether it’s for business purposes or personal blogging, one of the only ways to gain traction with Google is via quality content.
More than ever before, quality counts for everything in the eyes of Panda and Penguin and, without it, your website is in trouble.
And, in terms of quality, everything from an overload of links to grammatical errors to poor linking affects your website according to Google.
In other words, although the worst of the websites are long gone, that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to sneak past website watchdogs with mediocre content.
Inherently Natural Linking
As stated before, poor quality links, especially poor quality links and anchor texts that litter a webpage, are all red flags when it comes to the Panda and Penguin algorithms. And, every time black hatters come up with new ways of keyword stuffing, the algorithms answer back with updates.
Because of this, it’s important that your website still link naturally within the content.
But, that’s only half the battle because the URL itself must have a certain level of cohesiveness in regards to the rest of your site’s content too. Google loves links that add to the overall quality of a website and heavily penalize those that don’t.
Pandas and Penguins are Social Creatures
If you’ve ever heard the Internet as turning to “all things social,” that’s simply because it is. And, if your website isn’t jumping on the social media bandwagon, it’s going to slow your online progress, especially because Google’s algorithms think being social counts for a lot.
And, if you think updating your social status every few days is going to make your business website skyrocket into the Google rankings stratosphere, think again. It’s increasingly important for websites and blogs to socially network consistently and ensure that posted and tweeted content is of the well-managed, quality kind.
Keeping Things Fresh
Going along with the idea of keeping your website’s social presence up-to-date also comes the need to keep all of your content fresh.
The idea of website freshness is something that’s stood the test of Panda and Penguin time, ever since the first algorithm was unleashed.
And, in terms of Google’s SEO best practices, website freshness is probably one of the most obvious webmaster guidelines to follow. Without an influx of pertinent, trending topics and recurring additions of relevant content, your website probably wouldn’t receive much traffic anyways, regardless of algorithms.
As you can see, Panda and Penguin are still very much a part of today’s online landscape and as long as Google rules SEO, they always will.
