What’s in your blog?
Along comes a Panda….
He eats content and he is particular about who is talking about you, and he has a look to see what web sites have a link to you and if so are they noteworthy links, as in; does it help that a Ham Sandwich company has a link to you, but you are a metallurgist website?
He stops to think for a minute, then he has a look at how many blogs you have done lately an sees you have not uploaded anything for a while, nor had any social media interaction he therefore marks you somewhere page 5 and off he goes.
The Panda in my charming story is the biggest talked about Google algorithm of late, and he was all about links and content.
So widespread is his influence that some long standing highly ranked web sites almost disappeared from search results altogether because they either paid a company to manufacture links, or they had many links they did not know about from sites that had little to do with their subject matter, which led Google to produce a link-disavow tool so you can actually cry and tell the teacher that you don’t know what this link is and you did not create it!
Social media marketing is also a big part of what Panda is looking for:
These are important links back to your website, if 20 people say, have liked and shared an article of yours on their own social media this is called ‘People talking about you’ and offers an authority link back to you, This is a big positive tick in Google’s eyes!
Content marketing is slowly but surely replacing SEO (Search engine optimisation) which to many SEO companies, who really don’t understand your business like you do, means to pander purely to the robot and just add to the back ground, the keywords and meta-tags so that the Google robot sends you to what you asked for.
Google however have since woke up and gained consciousness, and realised that the Internet is for people and not for robots, hence Google Panda algorithm is the first in a new wave of systems that is actually trying to read your website. And soon it will know a good read from a dire one!
Let’s break this down, you are looking for say a: ‘Domestic swimming pools Thailand ’’ so you go to Google’s search page and write ‘Thailand swimming pool suppliers’. Google then scrawls through its memory banks to see what it has for you. If the Google robot has been tricked by clever keywords in the code of the website and sends you to this site which has inane scribble and dubious content, but lots of keywords, that’s no good for you, so what do you do?
You go straight back to Google to try again ( Or eventually you may try Bing or Yahoo) this skews their search results, and makes the prices they charge for PPC (pay per click advertising in the Pink frames at the top of the search page) less accurate, see how poor results can affect them and not just you?
Google Panda is a good thing for the majority of web users it means Google robots will favour consistently updated websites that offer you help and plenty of good content, but how, you ask do you update your website, what do you keep adding?
“Today I opened my shop”
“I sold three things today”
For the Love of all that’s Holy…. NOOOO!!!!!
The one thing that will kill your people off is constant nonsense about your everyday life!!
2013 is the year of the Blogger I have consistently, till I am blue in the face, told people to start blogging and start a separate blog site which feeds traffic to your main website with hyperlinks and calls to action, and now you are going to believe me!
Blogs create a brand awareness for you and you can calve a great niche on the Internet by writing about what you know, and when people appreciate what you know, then you become the
‘Go to person’
Write top tips that help people and have an ‘altruistic feel’ for your blog, don’t sell, use it as a funnel to send people to your original selling website. A kind of: Good cop-bad cop play off. Your Blog is Good cop and bad cop is the money taker.
In 2012 I helped over 30 companies in the UK create a blog, I taught them to understand how to write original heartfelt content about what they know that would be of use to someone else. I showed them how to create all the top social media connections and we added them to their website, I led them to the best Press release sites, how to add videos, slide shares, and how to send traffic back to their blog which, in turn sends traffic to their shop which in turn makes them MONEY!!!
Knowledge and action is power!