What's All This Panda and Penguin Stuff?

If you've been interested in better Google rankings, chances are you've heard of Panda and Penguin. You're asking yourself what in the world do these two cute animals have to do with Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

Well, turns out Panda's and Penguin's have a huge impact on web marketing. Before I explain, let me lay a little foundation.

Google has always used a complex search algorithm to evaluate a web site's relevancy in respect to search terms. In the early days it was easy. Pretty much just the number of key words on a site. But that was too easy to fool, as the spammers soon learned. 

Keep in mind though, Google's product is the "search result". The quality of their search result is very important. If you get nothing but spammy sites returned from a search, you'd soon stop using that search engine. So, in order to provide the highest quality results, Google has always had to manipulate their algorithm to stay ahead of the spammers. As Google got more sophisticated, so did the spammers. New, legitimate SEO companies appeared on the scene to provide "white hat" SEO techniques that were effective and legal (with Google). But soon good SEO companies figured out how to use "proper" SEO techniques to their advantage. The system became gamed.

Blogs: Your Social Media Hub

Blogs are short for “web logs,” defined by Wikipedia as “a website where entries are writ- ten in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.”

In its simplest form, a blog is an online diary. Blogs are highly personal in nature and design. All of the blogs together with the links connecting them are referred to as the “blogosphere.” Creating a blog gives you a chance to build something that is a unique reflection of you or your company.

Organizations and commercial companies often have a blog associated with their website to highlight new products or services, while individuals tell stories and offer opinions.

Your should blog because you want to share important information with your community. Your have knowledge and expertise and want to be an authoritative voice in the blogosphere. You want to guide your customers to other quality sources of information of products or services in your field. You want to educate and engage customers. You want to be the authoritative voice.

Blogs offer two key advantages over some other types of social media. First, they rank high in search engine result pages. Recently, Google made changes to its search algorithms that have an even more positive effect on blogs. Google’s Panda update looks at the quality of the content and penalizes the exploitation of keywords. So if a marketing consultant has encouraged you to put a large number of keywords on your website without real content to back them up, you may find your site drops in search engine rankings. Google’s Penguin update looks for unnatural links. But if you link to other credible sources, you’ll come out ahead. Now more than ever, a blog allows you to post updated content that appeals to the search engines.