Among search engines, Google dominates the industry with over 900 million visitors/month. No other search engine even comes close – Bing is a far second with 165 million visitors/month, and Yahoo comes in third with 160 million visitors/month. Therefore, it’s no surprise that business owners looking to propel their sites to the top of the search results pay close attention to Google’s methodology for ranking websites. Google is constantly updating it’s algorithm, which is actually a good thing, considering, there’s really no way to cheat it. Typically, Google doesn’t announce small changes, but recently, they announced over 20 updates to their Panda algorithm, with a couple of noteworthy changes. Google’s spiders no longer tolerate low-quality content. In fact, Google not only penalizes websites that have duplicate content, but also those that have generic content that can be found in mass in on the web. Google’s goal is to reward websites whose content adds value for end-users and punish those that use spamming or keyword-stuffing techniques. According to Google, quality content is that which is unique to the needs of the visitor – not that which is developed specifically with search engines in mind. For website owners with large sites, optimizing every page could potentially be a huge undertaking, so it’s best to prioritize which pages receive the Google treatment. By looking at Google Analytics, site owners are able to see the most trafficked pages on their site, and can then work toward making those pages even better for end-users. Quality content comes in many forms. It can be a well-written blog, a tutorial on installing a product, a case study for a service or customer reviews. Anything that is genuine and genuinely helpful qualifies. One of the best ways to start optimizing your site for Google is to test different content and placements of it. Multivariate or A/B testing on one page of your site can help you to determine the strategy and plan of action for the rest of your pages. And remember, Google never rests – so neither should your content creation efforts.Among search engines, Google dominates the industry with over 900 million visitors/month. No other search engine even comes close – Bing is a far second with 165 million visitors/month, and Yahoo comes in third with 160 million visitors/month. Therefore, it’s no surprise that business owners looking to propel their sites to the top of the search results pay close attention to Google’s methodology for ranking websites. Google is constantly updating it’s algorithm, which is actually a good thing, considering, there’s really no way to cheat it. Typically, Google doesn’t announce small changes, but recently, they announced over 20 updates to their Panda algorithm, with a couple of noteworthy changes. Google’s spiders no longer tolerate low-quality content. In fact, Google not only penalizes websites that have duplicate content, but also those that have generic content that can be found in mass in on the web. Google’s goal is to reward websites whose content adds value for end-users and punish those that use spamming or keyword-stuffing techniques. According to Google, quality content is that which is unique to the needs of the visitor – not that which is developed specifically with search engines in mind. For website owners with large sites, optimizing every page could potentially be a huge undertaking, so it’s best to prioritize which pages receive the Google treatment. By looking at Google Analytics, site owners are able to see the most trafficked pages on their site, and can then work toward making those pages even better for end-users. Quality content comes in many forms. It can be a well-written blog, a tutorial on installing a product, a case study for a service or customer reviews. Anything that is genuine and genuinely helpful qualifies. One of the best ways to start optimizing your site for Google is to test different content and placements of it. Multivariate or A/B testing on one page of your site can help you to determine the strategy and plan of action for the rest of your pages. And remember, Google never rests – so neither should your content creation efforts.