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When Google released the Panda updates, the face of SEO changed completely. This update took the emphasis away from having as many keywords as possible in your site, to making websites more user-friendly and easy to read. This aimed to increase the quality of sites on page one of Google so that users are presented with the most relevant information for their search terms.
Natural Content
The Google update was carried out in order to ensure that quality websites were ranked higher for their keywords and search terms than those sites which were relying on numerous backlinks to give their site authority. The drive for quality has changed the way in which SEO is carried out and seen a rise in the demand for skilled content writers.
Content must now be written solely with the user in mind rather than for a Google spider to pick up on. Information must be spelt correctly and include perfect grammar. The previous Google algorithm allowed poor grammar and inadequate content to rank highly in its search pages as it ticked the boxes in terms of keywords and readability by the spiders. However, the emphasis is now on people rather than machines and in order for a page to have true value, it must be created for human users.
The emphasis on human users means that the practise of hiding keywords within the background of your website is even more frowned upon. This is because this means of adding keywords to your site is clearly not for humans as they will not be able to see them.
Keywords
Keywords are an important part of SEO as they establish the terms which you want to appear in Google for which refer to your business. Keywords should occur naturally in your text and content as they relate to your business. However, in the past this has led to poor copywriters inserting keywords into content where they do not naturally fit, making the text difficult to read for humans or even make no sense at all. Another common technique that poor copywriters use is known as ‘keyword stuffing’. This is where articles or content is created and filled with keywords in an unnatural way; sentences such as ‘This web design company are experts in web design and lead the web design market.’ Not only does this sentence not make much sense to a human, the fact that it is stuffed with keywords means that it will actually cause the page to lose rank with Google. Approximately 5% of content should be relevant keywords which follow the natural flow of the content.
Length
The average Internet user will not be prepared to read lengthy articles or content as the Internet is viewed as a quick source of information. However, the content that you do create needs to be long enough to be credited by the Google search robots. Therefore, the optimum length for an article is between 400 and 1000 words; any less and Google will not consider it as quality content, any more and it will not be read by users.
