How Panda made SEO more creative

In the past, web developers were able to boost their ranking with the search engines by stuffing their pages with keywords, and creating hundreds of pages of low quality content.

In 2011 Google changed their algorithm when it launched its Panda update. This had a huge impact on search engine rankings, with 12% of searches affected by the change. Website owners were in uproar: many previously high ranking sites disappeared behind the front page.

The main changes instigated by Panda concerned:

• Quality
• Authority
• Credibility
• User signals

All this means that it’s now so much more difficult to cheat Google: if your website contains duplicate, low-grade text you will be penalised. You can no longer rely on low-quality content to boost your rankings.

This is great for the user sick of clicking on directory sites or content farms. However, some SEO experts saw this as an additional challenge. “Oh no,” they cried, “We can no longer provide low-quality content to improve our search engine ranking!” Not so for the SEO expert who is also concerned with usability.

Wagada saw Panda as a positive development. Our skills lie in producing a high quality and useful web experience for your customers. We won’t increase your ranking at the expense of your customers’ enjoyment of your website. Usability and SEO need to work together to increase your sales.

All this means that SEO just got a whole lot more creative.

More information on Wagada's creative SEO services.