If you are interested in where your web site turns up on Google then you may have heard of Google Panda – the name given the changes Google introduced this year, so that ”low quality” sites go down the rankings and good quality sites rise to the top.

I mention Panda today because there are stories circulating among those whose job it is to keep sites near the top of lists that yet more changes in the way Panda is working are coming on line.  There are reports of sites going down the rankings and coming up again – and other strange effects.

Indeed it is said that the Panda changes can affect around 12% of all search results.  While many are happy that “content farms” which simply publish nonsense articles about topics are reduced in the ranks, others say that copyright infringing sites can now be higher up the rankings than the original articles.

Two things seem fairly clear – that Panda doesn’t just affect one page’s results – but the whole web site, and that the changes are going to continue happening in order to get good original content up the top of the Google rankings.

At Hamilton House we’ve never pretended to have inside knowledge on the way Google works, but we have always focussed on producing high quality original pages of text on topics of interest for our clients.  These, we are sure, have a double effect.

First, because people do enter longer enquiry strings into Google search boxes these days, the more you publish the more likely you are to be found when someone puts in a specific text request.

To give an example, in the past people might have written “dyscalculia” into Google and looked that the results.  Today more people will write “how to cure dyscalculia” or “testing to see if you have dyscalculia” – and if you have used that exact phrase you will come out higher up the rankings.

Second, Panda seems to like quality text, and so the more of it you have the more likely you are to go up the rankings.

This is why we’ve always pushed Blogs as a great way forward – a simple way to put up information about your company on a daily basis.   Even if you know nothing about blogs we can set one up for you and get it running for under £100 – see http://www.hamilton-house.com/blogs

If you would like to see a blog in action, take a look at www.blog.hamilton-house.com

And you can also follow us on Twitter @HHMailings.   Or call me on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.