With one fell swoop, Google's latest algorithm update—dubbed Panda—demoted millions of Web pages. Content farms like Demand Media took a major hit, as did sites with lots of ads and little informational content. "The goal of the Google Panda update involves the filtering of low quality or duplicate pages that are deemed 'not useful' to users," explains Joe Pulizzi at the Junta42 blog.

Though most Google users will welcome the change, it raises an obvious question for anyone who works in legitimate SEO: How do we proceed? To answer, Pulizzi borrows these four tips from Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing:

• Evaluate your website both for duplication and for pages with low informational content or a disproportionately high number of ads.
• Focus on the continuing creation of useful, original content that provides true value to the reader.
• Promote content in a way that encourages links from other sites.
• Make it easy for readers to share your content at social networking channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.

"This comes back to one, singular ingredient for both content marketers and publishers to succeed," notes Pulizzi. "[C]reate valuable, compelling and relevant content on a consistent basis [for] a targeted user base. This is something that publishers have long known, but which corporate content marketers are just beginning to [understand]."

The Po!nt: Make it worth their while. Google's Panda update appears to reward the best content—so think like a publisher and give your readers something they really want to read.

Source: Junta42.

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