by Jody Mugele
Thank you, Google!
As a content editor I take pride in knowing how to use a semicolon. It makes me happy to look over a draft of a blog post I’ve created and delight in sentence variety on the page.
I love when a piece of content crosses my desk and I think to myself, that’s interesting!
Even better, when I receive content that exhibits authority on a subject, I feel real satisfaction.
There was a time not long ago when I wondered if craft really mattered on the Internet—if making an article authoritative, interesting, and pretty was just something I did for enjoyment and for the eyes of clients. It felt a little like living in a home full of clutter. If you could navigate your way to my room you’d find that it was neat and tidy, nothing broken, dusty, or useless. But, would anyone really bother to fight through the clutter of the rest of my home to find the nicest room in the house? And was my effort at cleanliness worth it?
When Panda was released in February, I smiled. I think it was when you said, “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality—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.” (Googleblog) Hooray! It’s not that I want sites to suffer, but people need to find good, interesting, and helpful information on the Internet. And they need to find it easily.
So, Google, I pondered what makes up authoritative, interesting and valuable information. I wondered if you would define it the same way I do. I guess I wasn’t alone in my curiosity. When May rolled around, I was glad to see that you defined your terms. I appreciate that you aren’t “disclosing the actual ranking signals,” but allowed us to “step inside Google’s mindset.” My summation and interpretation is this: Make the content about what humans want.
Now with the latest update to Panda (version 2.2), you have the ability to filter out content farms and websites which have heavy amounts of duplicate pages. Rock on!
I love it. We are on the same page.
Thanks, Google.