Quality Content: What Google Actually Means by This
Posted June 1, 2016
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The Overall Mission of Google and the Point of Its Evolving Algorithms
It has been Google’s mission since its inception to provide the users of its site the correct answers, definitions and images to whatever they type in the search bar. The company was launched in 1998, and it quickly became the global leader in connecting people with the information they seek. The company and its algorithms are in a constant state of development and learning, and over the years, it has figuratively shed its skin and evolved to become a better provider of answers to the entire planet. Since Google has been growing, it has also been learning, and when Google learns, it is able to adapt and fine-tune its search algorithm. By constantly refining its search algorithms, Google is better able to match the people with the best information and content they happen to be looking for.
Whenever the company does a big overall update on its search algorithms and new versions of the search engine is released, then there are definite results. Sometimes the new updates help sites, and sometimes the new updates hurt sites. Usually the updates focus on removing sites with low-tier content, stuffed keywords and spam heavy content from ranks to accommodate sites more deserving.
There have also been updates applied to different sets of algorithms, which impact the search engine’s ability to understand the questions or terms being searched. In other words, the updates are aimed at helping Google understand the vernacular of the person searching, so Google can match up content with whatever the person is trying to convey they want or need to know. Google is very clear about its intent to provide solid, quality content to people, so site owners should not have any confusion about what Google wants when ranking a domain. Google expects good content and a positive user experience, and if domains are providing what Google algorithms are searching for, then the domains will be provided with favorable search engine optimization.
The Panda and Penguin Updates: What the Updates Dislike and Prefer for Content
There is always buzz on SEO forums about new ways to rank sites better, whether there are blackhat (techniques used to cheat Google) or whitehat (techniques to raise rank with Google using honesty and quality) discussions taking place, then it is inevitable for Panda and Penguin to to come up together. They are used in tandem, and they make a powerful team used by Google to keep the ranking system of domains as focused on quality content as possible. They were released a little over a year apart, and each of the algorithm updates perform slightly different functions, but as stated before, when the two updates were paired up, it greatly improved the SEO and ranking system for Google. To fully and more easily understand what Google wants, it is a good idea to analyze the goals of Panda and Penguin.
At the beginning of 2011, Google launched a complex algorithm update called Panda, which has gone through a myriad of smaller updates since its launch. Panda’s goal was to seek out and take aim at sites sites with low-brow, poor content and hit them with penalties. The penalties would then prevent sites from doing any decent ranking, and the sites penalized by Panda were considered to have poor SEO afterwards. The Panda update considered a site to have poor content if there was a lot of keyword stuffing, content spamming, heavy amounts of duplicate content and excessive ads. Panda has been very useful to Google, so Google made the decision to add the update to its core ranking algorithm, which was quite the buzz among SEO experts and consultants.
Google’s Penguin update followed Panda a year later in spring 2012. While Panda focused on content spamming, Penguin complimented it well by focusing on link spamming. Google tends to look favorably on sites mentioned, or linked to, by other sites, especially respected sites with high authority ranking. When the owner of a site can get other sites to link to their site, then this is called backlinking. If a site were to get backlinks, especially from sites considered to be sites of authority, then Google would take the backlinks into heavy consideration for ranking a site for appropriate keywords. For example, if someone had a blog about health and WebMD linked back to the blog as a reference, then it would be a major boost in terms of the blogs value. Unfortunately, there are always ways to cheat the system. Google uses Penguin to counteract the exploits. Penguin was able to seek out the domains with a ton a of low quality backlinks, especially to link exchanges and farms. Google used Penguin to give these link farming sites an option. The sites could either break ties with the low-tier backlinks or suffer the consequences of penalties and remain in page rank limbo.
Google’s Way of Helping Site Owners Offer Good Content
The development of Panda and Penguin was a double-edged sword. The two algorithms were created to keep users away from terrible content, but they were also created to motivate site and content developers to focus on a balance of things, which would help create a truly exceptional site worth looking at. Having algorithms in place to motivate people to produce unique, quality content was brilliant, but Google took it a step further with backlinks by forcing sincere promotions between sites.
Producing quality content and operating within the rules of Google’s algorithms is actually quite simple. Authors of content need to make sure the content is credible, so they need to either be experts or become experts on what they are creating. The content should be or appear to be as unique as possible. Content does not have much quality if it is already offered at a myriad of different sites. Finally, the most important aspect of good, quality content is its usefulness. The content should either be entertaining, problem solving or answering questions. Those things are the basic aspects of quality content.
