Content Marketers: A Beginner’s Guide to Google’s Penguin and Panda Updates

A Primer for Marketers Running Content Marketing Campaigns

As the co-founder of a content marketing company, I've attended my fair share of content marketing conferences and read a lot of material on the space. One recurring theme I've noticed is that companies, ranging from SEO firms to high-end agencies, attempt to scare people into using their products by talking about Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithm updates. The fallout is that so-called “content marketing experts” use the words “Penguin” and “Panda” to show off how smart they are about the space. I wanted to put together a beginner’s guide for those who are new to SEO on what “Penguin” and “Panda” actually are, and what effect they have on your content marketing efforts.

To reiterate, this article is intended for beginners, not seasoned Internet marketers.

First – a short primer on how search engine algorithms work

A search engine’s main purpose is to provide useful information to people without a lot of human intervention involved. You may remember the early days of the Web – when companies had to be listed on Yahoo’s directory, or other major directories to get traffic – search engines automate that process by providing relevant information to consumers without a lot of headache.

Search engines use web crawlers to scan the web for certain information about a website. Look here for more detail on what web crawlers do, and what they look for. Once the crawler does its job, it subsequently indexes results in order of relevance. Search engine algorithms look at multiple criteria in order to determine a website’s relative importance compared to others (when a specific search is queried by an end user). Here is some general information from Google on how search works.

In theory, the crawler would do its job perfectly, but unfortunately, humans are smart and know how to game the system. The rise of Google, and the ability to make a lot of money off of search engine advertising arbitrage, spawned the entire field of SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

Fortunately for us, Google has some of the smartest people in the world working on eliminating the loopholes, some of which are addressed by Google’s Penguin and Panda updates.

Enter Google Panda

One way end users attempted to game the system was creating duplicate content within a website, and across different websites to “own” a specific search result. For example, if you were selling golf clubs, and you wanted to appear high in “buy golf clubs”, you might use the phrase: “We are the number one destination to buy golf clubs on the Internet”. You could subsequently use that phrase on different pages, and be given credit by the web crawler for being a very relevant result for “buy golf clubs”. The aforementioned is an overly-simplistic example, but you can imagine how sophisticated marketers could effectively automate content, and duplicate it within a site to appear relevant to a search engine.

Here is a list of websites that were affected by Panda, and the degree to which they were affected. As you can see, a lot of very smart people from great companies were hit by the update. For more information on how Panda is being maintained on an ongoing basis (note –Panda updates are released almost monthly), you can refer to Search Engine Land.

…and Subsequently Google Penguin

Another major criteria search engines use to determine your relevance within various search criteria are links and anchor text. The more pithy links you include within articles and content, the more credible you seem. Additionally, if people link back to your content, and use anchor text appropriately, you appear to be extremely relevant. Example – in the case of buying golf clubs, if The Golf Channel linked back to an article you wrote and used the anchor text “this is the best site to buy golf clubs”, you would seem particularly relevant.

The unintended consequence of this was people began paying for links across hundreds of spammy and unrelated websites. In some cases, marketers created thousands of websites (automatically) with links directing them back to their “flagship” property. The most famous link buying scandal was when JC Penny was caught purchasing thousands of links across hundreds of sites. Anchor text such as “cocktail dresses” was found on bulgariapropertyportal.com and JC Penny ranked #1 for “Samsonite carry on luggage” above Samsonite.com. Other companies also used “link building” techniques, such as commenting on forums, and other peoples’ articles about relevant subject matter to game the system.

Google Penguin effectively eliminated that practice.

What can you take away from this?

Content marketers, all you really need to know are two things:

· Produce high quality original content: The reason the term SEO is “taboo” and the term “content marketing” is hot, is because of Google’s algorithm update. Marketers have basically taken one term, and started calling it another to avoid the association with shady practices associated with search engine marketers.

· Create content consistent with your brand: Stop trying to create content to appear at the top of search engines. What will end up happening is you will create crappy content that isn’t at all consistent with your brand. Focus instead on staying true to your brand and producing relevant information for your audience.

You can never control what Google does, you can only control what you do. Stick to creating high quality content, and none of the buzzwords agencies and marketers use to sell you on their product will matter.