In a far from shock announcement last week, Google’s Amit Singhal advised site owners concerned about the effects of Panda to concentrate more on quality content and less on the search engine’s algorithm. Singhal, who attempted to direct attention away from the Panda Update in his blog post, listed a series of questions site owners should ask themselves when developing content. The Google guru also advised site owners to ‘focus on high-quality content rather than trying to optimise for any particular Google algorithm.’
Singhal’s post was in reply to the concerns of site owners worldwide who have experienced ranking dives after the Panda, or Farmer, Update. Many owners, and those in SEO careers, have been trying to reverse-engineer the algorithm since the update, which affected an unexpected number of websites.
The main message of Singhal’s post was that it was a mistake to concentrate on algorithm updates when small updates are being made all the time. Singhal stated that Panda was just one of an expected 500 changes set to roll out this year, with many more changes scheduled.
While the message did not provide the specifics many site owners may have desired in terms of search engine optimisation, Singhal’s list of questions does provide a good base for assessing content quality. His list, which included questions on originality and real-world publish-worthiness, may have also given a little of Google’s game away. The list’s emphasis was on publishing standards, signifying the level the search engine expects from unique content in 2011.
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