The Google algorithms change all the time and as such announcements about the company targeting low quality content don’t cause tremendous ripples on the surface. The general speculation, however, is that content farms are next on the chopping block. Google Panda has search engine marketers work round the clock to ensure that their client sites comply with all requirements for good ranking and are free from so-called junk or spam type content. The newest adjustment to their Google Panda algorithm may be a bit more difficult to address.

How Does Google Evaluate High or Low Quality Content?

One will first have to know how Google evaluates content and identifies spam before pro-active steps can be taken to limit the effects of Google Panda. Unfortunately the information has not been shared widely, but the following factors may play a role:

• Whether a website is generally a content farm where numerous topics are covered by a range of authors or whether the site covers a specific niche.
• Author Rank may become more important as Google will give more attention to articles written by a higher ranking author than one with a poor rating.
• The general length and depth of the articles as well writing style may be assessed (doing so will take loads of manpower or highly intelligent bots though).
• Authority level of the author and site on a topic. A site containing articles about maize seeds for instance, will be frowned upon if it also covers pregnancy, televisions etc.
• The age of the site will still be important.

When considering Google’s announcement one must agree that it does seem as if content farms are the targets rather than normal websites. Whereas one in the past would have added an article section to a website where the marketing articles featured, it may become necessary to integrate the articles in the various website categories as to prevent Google from viewing those as spam type content. This of course, is still mere speculation, but it does pay to reflect on possible scenarios.

Shallow Content

Google mentioned low quality and shallow content in their announcement. The normal website publisher may become wary of the terms, especially if the site owner has not hired a professional content writer. In general, it should not affect the average website where the content is not churned out at an enormous rate simply to have information that could be indexed. If a site owner or SEO company focuses on the provision of in-depth quality articles rather than marketing the company in every possible article, they have no reason to be concerned.  The content farms are known for some low quality content, but many of the articles are well written. Some articles may get a push in the ranking simply because of the author rank, while others can get a shift into the sandbox.

Why the Drastic Steps?

Google has not announced loud and clear that the target is content farms, simply that they are considering numerous changes because they want to ensure accurate, relevant and high quality search results for their users. Google has come under fire recently specifically on the topic of quality of search results. It is thus an effort by the company to save reputation and thus restore integrity of their search engine. Sites offering content that is strikingly similar to information at various other sites may also become targets.

The recipe for success in search results thus includes the major ingredient of originality. Sites such as Article Base, eHow, and Ezine obviously will have to do cleaning and be strict on the acceptance policy. It is difficult to control content which comes free. If you don’t pay anything for the articles, you thus don’t have much leverage. According to Google around 12% of searches are affected in some way or another by the changes Google has made in its algorithms.

Matt Cutts heading up the spam cutting at Google mentioned in a recent blog that high quality sites will be rewarded. Just how, one will have to wait and see. It does seem that anonymous articles don’t fall in the category of quality and as such the name associated with an article, may very well become even more important.

The Upside

High quality content creators have on numerous occasions complained about the copying of their content by other sites. The new changes in the algorithm will help to reduce copying of articles and simply rewriting content sourced on the Internet. As such the SEO companies making use of high quality content writers will have no problem and may indeed benefit from the changes made by Google. It is rather frustrating for a company to invest in solid quality content generation to simply find numerous websites with strikingly similar content two or three weeks later. The changes will bring back integrity to SEO and content generation and although some may feel the panic attacks coming on, for the most part, quality content writers and SEO companies will appreciate the changes.

Tips for Getting On the Good Side of Panda

• Remove content that is similar on all you pages. This means that if you have a little paragraph or sentence that is placed on numerous pages of your site that it will be best to remove such.
• Check affiliate sites for duplicate or similar and low quality content about your products and remove where necessary.
• Delete any pages from your index which are no longer used – cut the dead wood.
• Remove small letter links from the bottom of your pages – not all, only the ones that can be seen as spam links.
• Control the content at sub-domains to minimize duplication and low quality content.
• Remove any graphics and navigation which can cause slow loading speed.
• Ensure that there are no repeats in the headings of pages.
• Create original titles and ensure that when you add articles to your site that the content is not only original in the sense that you have generated such instead of copying, but each article must differ considerably in content from other articles on your site.
• Keyword selection becomes important as articles covering similar keywords can be seen as too similar. Choose distinct keywords and where you can, remove tags which can get the Panda upset.

Numerous high quality sites have been hit by the latest Panda changes and are struggling to make a comeback. The best advice is to keep creating original high quality content that offers value to the reader and to follow the principles of good SEO practice to ensure that your website is not seen by Google as one of the content farm sites.