SEO (search engine optimization) has been one of the most important buzz words for web publishers over the past 10 years. Getting ranked in Google means free traffic for web publishers, so improving and optimizing a given website for the search engines was essential. However, Google Panda is here to stay, and it has forever changed the rules of SEO.
For the past 10+ years, Google utilized its PageRank methodology to rank websites. If you had a website about basketball, and you got a link from ESPN.com – Google would notice that your site is a quality site about basketball. It was similar to a voting system, when a relevant and high authority site linked to you, it would count as a vote. And the more votes your website received, the better your website would rank. Of course relevance played a roll, as Google gave more value to sites linking to you which were about a similar topic as yours. In addition, authority mattered, so one link from ESPN.com may hold more value than 5 links from sports related blogs which weren’t as popular.
Two other major factors that Google considered were unique content and the "Title Tag". Google wanted content that was unique and not displayed on other web pages across the internet. If duplicate content was found, Google would determine which site was the original author of the content, and it would penalize the other sites which had scraped the content.
Google also factored the "Title Tag" as it was a way for web publishers to tell users and Google what the given webpage was about. This helped Google to organize and rank web pages for given keyword searches.
This methodology for ranking web pages worked, and Google utilized the above methods in addition to several others to display highly relevant search results. For years, Google results were of a higher quality than all other search engines, which is why Google continued to command over a 65% market share. However, over the past few years, other search engines such as Bing caught up, and Google wasn't so special anymore. At the same time, web publishers became savvy and they figured out ways to sneak into Google ahead of more relevant results. For example, earlier this year, JC Penny was accused of purchasing links on websites across the web to make Google think that these links were natural and thus a vote for JC Penny's websites.
As more and more users complained about search results, Google realized it needed to shift, and in came Google Panda. Google Panda is an entirely new way for Google to evaluate websites. And while Google will still factor in many of the same criteria it has in the past, Google Panda adds an entirely new element to Google's ranking methodology.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-panda-has-changed-seo-forever-2011-6#ixzz1Qe1uo8dD
For the past 10+ years, Google utilized its PageRank methodology to rank websites. If you had a website about basketball, and you got a link from ESPN.com – Google would notice that your site is a quality site about basketball. It was similar to a voting system, when a relevant and high authority site linked to you, it would count as a vote. And the more votes your website received, the better your website would rank. Of course relevance played a roll, as Google gave more value to sites linking to you which were about a similar topic as yours. In addition, authority mattered, so one link from ESPN.com may hold more value than 5 links from sports related blogs which weren’t as popular.
Two other major factors that Google considered were unique content and the "Title Tag". Google wanted content that was unique and not displayed on other web pages across the internet. If duplicate content was found, Google would determine which site was the original author of the content, and it would penalize the other sites which had scraped the content.
Google also factored the "Title Tag" as it was a way for web publishers to tell users and Google what the given webpage was about. This helped Google to organize and rank web pages for given keyword searches.
This methodology for ranking web pages worked, and Google utilized the above methods in addition to several others to display highly relevant search results. For years, Google results were of a higher quality than all other search engines, which is why Google continued to command over a 65% market share. However, over the past few years, other search engines such as Bing caught up, and Google wasn't so special anymore. At the same time, web publishers became savvy and they figured out ways to sneak into Google ahead of more relevant results. For example, earlier this year, JC Penny was accused of purchasing links on websites across the web to make Google think that these links were natural and thus a vote for JC Penny's websites.
As more and more users complained about search results, Google realized it needed to shift, and in came Google Panda. Google Panda is an entirely new way for Google to evaluate websites. And while Google will still factor in many of the same criteria it has in the past, Google Panda adds an entirely new element to Google's ranking methodology.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-panda-has-changed-seo-forever-2011-6#ixzz1Qe1uo8dD