Purrfect Domains

Over the course of the last month there has been a lot of talk in SEO circles about changes that Google has made to their algorithms lately. Changes that first started having a major impact with the Panda update.

Those changes became more of a factor when the first update to Panda was implemented some time later. Websites that had previously ranked high both in terms of toolbar pagerank and their position in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) suddenly didn’t rank nearly so well. In fact, many of them dropped to the lowest depths of ranking and were suddenly absent from SERPs.

Things began to settle down after a while as the usual thing happened. SEO experts figured out how the changes work (well mostly, Google holds their system a closely guarded secret and nobody else *really* knows exactly how it works) and made changes to the way they did things.

A lot of SEO’s even managed to figure out ways that would help a site recover from the losses inflicted by Panda. Things stayed like this for a while and people started to relax again.

Then Penguin was implemented.

The changes that came with Penguin were even more severe, causing even greater changes in the SERPs for a larger number of websites. Webmasters and SEO’s were suddenly in a panic. A lot of the work that they had spent so much time doing was suddenly being recognized by Google’s algorithm as web spam and the offending pages were losing both toolbar pagerank and SERPs positions.

Once again it took only a few weeks for SEO experts to figure out changes to make in the way they do things and what they advise people to do in order to counter the effects of those losses.

More recently SEO circles have been buzzing like mad. Some are quoting statements by Google’s Matt Cutts about an upcoming update to Penguin. He’s been quoted as saying “You don’t want the next Penguin update”. I would include a link to an example here but I’ve misplaced my notes, just Google that quote and you’ll find plenty of them.

Then about a week and a half ago I read an article on SEO by the Sea that discussed the details of one of Google’s recent patents. It is, to say the least, an interesting read.

So why am I looking forward to the next Penguin update when many SEO’s and most webmasters are practically crapping their pants over it?

Because these updates have done me nothing but good.

I have several websites and blogs. They have all been pagerank zero and at the bottom of the SERPs for most of the time since the great “Google Slap” in the fall of 2007. When Panda was implemented that started to change and when Penguin appeared things changed even more.

How do things stand now?

Out of five blogs and two websites, all of which were pagerank zero for years, four blogs are now showing pagerank 1, the two websites are now pagerank 2 for the first time since the “slap”.

I have to say here that this blog is not included in those results because it’s actually fairly new and has never had pagerank or decent SERPs position before. It’s going to change for the better though, I am certain of that.

When I read that article about the Google patent and what it implies for SEO and then read the patent itself I started seeing that my blogs and websites stand to benefit considerably from the next Penguin update.

Why?

Because I don’t engage in webspam. I don’t use keyword stuffing, I try hard not to link to “bad neighborhoods” or questionable sites and if I’m not sure or just don’t have time to check them then I use rel=”nofollow” on the link to disavow myself from whatever might be on the other end that I don’t know about.

I don’t go building dozens or hundreds or thousands of links per day, week, month, whatever. I do occasionally work on building links but for the most part I don’t have time to devote to that, therefore I rely on links that are created by people who read my content and like it enough to link to it.

The one single thing I concentrate on the most is in creating good content. When I write I am usually doing one of two basic things.

1. Trying to be informative in articles such as this one or in reviews or articles expressing my opinion of something or someone.

2. Articles in which I am trying to be entertaining. I write short stories of various flavors and I’ve been told by some that I’m pretty good. I also make videos that I upload to Youtube and then embed in blog posts. Since the videos themselves cover a variety of genres then the posts in which they are embedded also cover some variety.

I do vary how I embed the posts. Most often I’ll just include a short blurb of text about the video and then embed it. Other times I’ll have somewhat more to say about it before I place the embed code.

The only really consistent thing I do about link building is that I usually tweet my blog posts, occasionally including a link to them on Facebook.

Other than that I might use a link to a post in a comment on another blog but that’s rare, I don’t often have time to read other blogs, never mind doing so for the express purpose of building links. If I comment at all it’s because I actually have something to say. The link part of it, nofollow or not, is just a bit of extra something.

A new update to Penguin? Bring it on!!

When it hits I’m going to sit back and watch the web spammers tumble like a house of cards while my sites, built on a solid foundation of actual real content, stand rock solid and rise above the heights the web spammers once commanded.

This thing is going to be nothing but win for me.