Every business is bound to bump into one as they offer entrepreneurs their services. They speak of SEO or search engine optimization as if it were a subject included back in high school. Therefore, for those laymen that might be confused especially at this point when a single search about SEO brings up a multitude of red flags, we’ll try to clearly explain what you might be seeing.Google Panda and Penguin Update

Firstly, we’ve heard plenty of gossips around business owners that SEO is in fact dead, and there is no point in banking any of your online marketing investment into it. Primarily, they are basing this conclusion from some light reading about how Google has been revamping its search engine algorithm. True enough, when someone does a search about SEO on Google, you’d surely be greeted with forums, blog posts, and news about how the Panda and the Penguin update have changed the landscape in a span of a few short months. Worst is if you’ve landed in a forum when a bunch of SEO experts whine about how the two updates is making their businesses obsolete.

As someone who’s been making a living online, personally, I’m sick of it. I’m tired about how these so called experts talks about how Google is such a bad guy as if their clients have no way of finding their discussions thread. Because no matter how you wouldn’t like to admit, if you’re running an online business, there is no getting around the fact that you have to comply with what Google wants. Moreover, if all we do is talk about how Google is ruining our business for the better part of our day, then we’re basically scaring them away right?

How the Panda Update Changed the Ballgame
In layman’s term, the Panda update that Google rolled out pushes everyone who manages a page on the internet to improve user experience and content quality. If in the past, a so-called expert can get away with stuffing as much of his or her keywords on a page to get a good ranking, post-Panda it wouldn’t work anymore. Factors such as bounce rate, loading time, user interaction (shares or +1s) are now given more weight rather than sticking with dumb metrics like keyword density.

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The Penguin Update Is All About Penalizing Over-Optimization
In the past, a site can claim a great Google ranking as long as it has plenty of backlinks. It doesn’t matter much where those backlinks are placed, as long as yours outnumbers the competition. Thankfully, because of the Penguin update, Google is now able to recognize over-optimized pages and treats them as spam. Thus, website owners are now only linking to authority websites, same niche sites and those that thinks highly of quality.

Conclusion: the future of SEO doesn’t look as dim as what some of us might think. Google is only tightening its grip on those that take advantage of black hat techniques. Now that’s something you need to spend more time searching for.