The Optimized Panda Pen

With over 166 million players, Minecraft is the endless adventure of a world of pixelated Legos. Residing in this multi-faceted world is the black and white spotted bear “mod”. As long as it is being fed bamboo, it is friendly, warm, and cuddly. However, when threatened-especially when the cubs are in danger, it will be of a dangerous proportion using its fangs, claws, and teeth to attack.

Who created the Pixelated Panda?

In February 2011, Google released an algorithm update under code name

“Panda”. Huh? For me, my curiosity peeked to know why they call a Google update by such a name. Turns out the software engineer's name was Navneet Panda.

Navneet Panda is surprisingly hard to find information about. All I could find is that he has an extensive career in computer science with companies like IBM, Intel, and of course Google! He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in the early 2000s.  

Panda was designed by Navneet to rid the internet of low content and low value websites. In the age of information, this algorithm builds trust among web users. When Donald Trump coined the term “Fake News”, we needed the pixelated Panda stiffing out the useless bamboo (content) that is not helpful or relevant to a user’s search query or to feed the black and white spotted bear. Meaning that the algorithm serves a purpose with the user experience in mind. There is still a lot of conflicting information on the web.

However, at least this was one way of giving people valuable content to consume. In other words, you have to research to some degree or have a level of experience to make a talking point or have some kind of organic content. 

The Panda update was intended not only to challenge poorly written or untuneful content that Black hat search engine optimizers (SEO) would weave into webpages such as spammy content, keyword stuffing, and content farms to just fill a webpage with all types of useless information just to have a Google bot crawl it and rank it.

The Battle Against Pixelated Po-Ping

 

Pandas are generally very peaceful bears. In the September 2008 film, Kung Fu Panda, Po-Ping is depicted as a rather lazy and relaxed character. It is not until after his hard work and training that his dream of becoming a kung fu master becomes a reality.

How can I avoid the bear's wrath? Don't mess with the cubs and don't write crappy content! Do you research for sure? Doing extensive research on your topic will allow for a more colorful description of your topic. Meaning, you can speak with a topic from a more authoritative standpoint rather than just trying to use keyword stuffing.

In my opinion, you'll stifle creativity anyway in your writing by trying to ensure every grammatical key word is in the appropriate place. The obsession to get the right words in the right space is the reason why the Panda bear could kung-fu your site in the first place.

Panda was last updated on July 15, 2017 version 4.2 woven into the algorithm. In any case, this means that SEO practices remain centered around the highest quality content. Rather than taking the most impactful blunt of its 2011 rollout, it is more likely to just affect your rankings and indexing as well as the user's overall experience. This is without relying on numbers.

Best Practices for SEO

  

Make your key words research more relatable and natural in the text you write. Find more strategic ways to make your writing more comprehensive and engaging. I am a firm proponent in believing if you’re not writing for the user experience you already lost them.

“Just the facts ma’am.” A quote from Joe Friday from the 1949 television series Dragnet. His role was detective in Los Angeles. When Joe came to the door, it was just the facts he wanted to hear.

As a result, we need to do our research on our points of discussion in order to provide our end users with the best possible experience. This is why I believe the future of writers and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will work hand and hand constantly for the years to come. Copywriters or writers have not been highlighted as a topic in the SEO industry, from what I can see. 

Images and videos are essential, but so is the written word with engaging content. I know for a lot of people writing is not really a strong suit especially in a technical profession. However, what if your images and videos had words on the page that also bedazzled your readers—did you just think of Elizabeth Hurley? Ha! Alright, seriously, you need a person that’s keen on the pen my friend.

I Need A Writer

Remember we are talking about Panda bears here, right? What can you do to write better content? The first rules of writing remains the same: you need a main idea or a thesis. A nice opening introduction with smooth transition words into your body paragraphs with supporting details. 

Now, the paragraph length per se is a different type of read on the internet so you might have to break them up to make it more understandable. I will start the next paragraph here.

Alright here is my next paragraph. Then, you want a nice conclusion that touches back on the main idea and briefly summarizes your supporting points. It may be more efficient to write out an outline to keep your thoughts organized while filling in the blanks

Try this outline format:

• Main Idea

  • Introduction

    • Main Point 1

      • Supporting details (other sources of information, facts, or statistics)

    • Main Point 2

      • Supporting details (other sources of information, facts, or statistics)

    • Main Point 3

      • Supporting details (other sources of information, facts, or statistics)

• Conclusion

Clean writing will help with readability which will assist you with crawling when it’s time for a Google bot to come and index your page. You want to be indexed so that when a user searches for your keywords it is not just finding key words but helpful thick, dense, and rich content.

Our pixelated Panda is very happy now because we have some high-quality bamboo for him to eat. Why poke the bear anyway? Whether you need writing or content generation, the Geek Tech Gurus will help feed the Panda.