Google's February Farmer/Panda update has every internet marketing company taking a hard look at which article marketing strategies are still going to be affective.
This new algorithm change was in direct response to the increased rankings of low quality content farms that provide very little if any benefit to site visitors.
To gain positions within specific searches, these content farms would generate cheap, keyword heavy copies once they figured out what the most popular search terms were.
Providing their search engine results pages with the highest quality and most relevant sites is the basis of Google's business model.
For awhile now, Google has had their radar tuned into these low quality content farms.
And though they will not admit it, this change seems to be directed at these sites.
On a consistent basis, Google will change the algorithm for its search engine.
These changes are usually so small that few people other than internet marketing companies notice.
But this most recent update is a bit different with at least 12% of search results in the US affected.
The good thing about this update is that Google has penalized sites with low-quality content, sites with copied or "scraped" content and sites that have a low content to ad ratio.
This tweak is designed to fix the problem of search results that have had an increased number of low sites, something Google has been criticized for in the past.
Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said in a recent blog, "Our goal is simple: to give users the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible".
In the long run this should benefit internet marketing companies that focus on helping their clients build trust and authority by providing visitors with high quality, original content.
Unfortunately, there is always collateral damage in situations like these.
Google's Farmer/Panda update is no different.
If you are an internet marketing company using article marketing as part of your link building campaign, and post useless content with hyperlinks to sites that Google has labeled a Content Farm, your links will be worth much less than they were before assuming the article wasn't de-indexed all together.
Since these articles have probably seen a substantial drop in search ranking, you have most likely noticed the drop if traffic is your goal.
So what should you do? Here are some suggestions.
1.
Write better content.
What gets read is high quality content.
High quality content also gets linked to.
Google sees content that gets read and linked to as relevant and authoritative.
2.
Promote your content better.
If people don't know your articles exist, they don't get read.
Getting the content noticed is your job.
You will need to use an assortment of social media outlets and guest blogging and implement a good link building strategy.
If the Google Farmer Update has taught internet marketing companies and search engine optimization specialists anything, it's that SEO is ultimately about people.
Don't get me wrong, you have to take into consideration what Google wants to get good search rankings.
But if you begin with your audience in mind, write quality content that uses the language people use when searching, and find quality inbound links, people will like you.
And Google will like you too.