I’ve said for years now that the goal of Google is to put SEO people out of business, and that may have been a little harsh.
What might be more accurate is to say Google is redefining what it means to SEO a website. As SEO tactics were adopted, Google would implement counter-measures to negate them. From loading up a site with keywords, to getting lots of bogus backlinks – each SEO tactic was incorporated into the Google algorithm and new tactics would be searched for.
So now Google has come out with the Panda update, and with it comes a need for SEO people to ‘reset’ their best-practices again. The panda update focuses more than ever on the site quality, which makes sense if you remember site quality is what Google wants to have in their search results. What does this mean for you? Here is what Search Engine Land has to say about it:
The SEO model has changed with Panda in that, rather than getting as many URLs as you can indexed, you now want only your highest-quality, most important URLs indexed. Consistent signals should be sent as to which pages are most important:
- Decide which URLs are canonical and create strong signals (rel canonical, robot exclusion, internal link profile, XML sitemaps)
- Decide which URLs are your most valuable and ensure they are indexed and well optimized
- Remove any extraneous, overhead, duplicate, low value and unnecessary URLs from the index
- Build internal links to canonical, high-value URLs from authority pages (strong mozRank, unique referring domains, total links, are example metrics)
- Build high-quality external links via social media efforts
SEOmoz also has some good info, if you are interested in the subject.