Let’s face it; most of us entrepreneurs these days rely on the Internet as our main source of income. How high we rank on Google will have a direct correlation with the sales we are making, and can ultimately make or break our business.
This is especially true for those of us who don’t sell high-ticket items and cannot realistically compete using pay per click campaigns.
With that said, all of us who are reliant on Google as a source of income are probably well aware of a recent update to its algorithms known as, “The Panda Update.”
For those of you who aren’t familiar and plan on starting an SEO campaign in the future, The Panda Update is a series of algorithm changes Google has made that are designed to weed out all the bad sites on the internet, and only rank the sites that actually deserve to be ranked high!
Sounds great right? Not necessarily. In the past month sites from all over the world were bounced from the search engines, receiving penalties from Google, or losing high rankings. Unfortunately, many of these people did not necessarily deserve this, and were the victims of performing SEO tactics that they may not have realized would get them into trouble.
Let’s face it; Google is cracking down on people that manipulate the search engines as best as they can, and they are only going to become more efficient with this as time passes on.
This means we must prepare and understand the rules of SEO if we wish to keep our sites ranked high and business flourishing. The following rules are three guidelines you absolutely must follow if you wish to flourish in the post panda world:
1. Stay away from low quality links.
In the past, many people advanced in link building used programs such as Article Marketing Robot to build hundreds of links to hundreds of sites in a matter of minutes. Linking to low quality blogs, directories, and sites that will post just about any link was a common practice. These days things have changed and Google is onto the game. Sites that link to bad sites are a punishable offense in the post panda era and will have you losing rankings before you know it. Focus on quality, not quantity!
2. Find quality sites that are in your niche.
We not only need to build quality links with high PR rankings, but we want to build high quality links that are in our niche. For example, if I am a dating site, a high PR site in my niche would be receiving a link from Match.com. In the post panda world Google is placing a bigger emphasis on this then ever. In fact, one quality link from a major site with a good reputation will hold more value than hundreds of low quality links that aren’t in your niche. Just think about it logically, if I am a dating advice website, and I am linked to Match.Com for an article I wrote, doesn’t it make sense that this link holds hundreds of times more value then if I were to link to hundreds of blogs or sites that are low quality which have nothing to do with dating?
3. Content, Content, Content.
Due to the fact that so many people over the years have manipulated the search engines by sending bad back links to their site, these days Google seems to be shifting back towards quality content as the most important aspect of a websites ranking. It should be your goal to write information that is highly informative and provides a service to anyone landing on your website. Nobody knows exactly how Google determines whether your content is quality or not, but you better believe it has algorithms in place to help make these decisions. So update your blog and website at least twice a week with good, quality content, and you will find your rankings improving greatly over time.
When all is said and done, the game has changed a lot when it comes to SEO. Cheating may provide a high jump in the short run, but in the end, the quality sites with great information are going to win out. So stay white hat, and help yourself survive the post panda era!
Joshua Pompey is founder of the site therealonlinedatinggame.com. If you want tons of free information on how to succeed at online dating, click online dating tips for men. Or learn free tips on how to create the perfect profile by clicking, online dating profile examples!
