Google announced late yesterday that it will make a major shift to its algorithm to significantly improve the quality of their search results by punishing and effectively diminishing content farm sites from the top of their SERP (search engine results page).
You may not know what a content farm site is, but I guarantee you’ve landed on them many many times. It’s those sites you click to after a search only to find a bunch of terrible, non-relevant content and a ton of ads or links to other sites. More likely than not, you clicked back to Google and tried another site, which is exactly why Google is making this change. They (Google) effectively drove you to a site that did not provide you with value, and it’s Google’s objective to give you the highest quality, relevant content for your search as possible.
Kudos to Google on the announcement, but I do feel they’ve obviously known of these sites just as much as we have. Kind of odd that they are just now declaring this war. Seems as if they have been battling these types of sites from day one.
Anyways, the reason for this post is to point out what Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal from Google say they are looking for in sites from their blog post:
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
Here’s the GOOD:
This is yet another example of the power of ORIGINAL, HIGH VALUE content on your site. If search traffic is important to your business and your site is not getting updated with original content often, you’re missing the opportunity to make some big things happen.
Look at your industry, look at your product, look at your data. Put together a content strategy to turn your knowledge into the type of original content Google is telling you specifically they are looking for.
Original content is the king…and getting more powerful by the day it seems.
Here’s the BAD:
There are going to be some casualties, which we’ll naturally be watching closely. Every client who has paid us for SEO services is at or near the top of the search engines. This very well could negatively affect them. It the nature of working with another service that you have no control over.
Don’t be shocked if your site takes a hit. Be prepared to give them what they are asking for.
I hope this helps,
pferrier
