The Lessons Of Google Panda

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   Chris Tylerposted 10 years ago

   My favorite wrestler, when I was a little kid, was "Rowdy" Roddy Piper; while other kids were pretending to be Hulk Hogan, I was tying a towel around my waist and pretending it was a kilt. Now the Hot Rod had many famous catchphrases, but one of the most famous was also my favorite: "Just when they think they have all the answers, I change the question". That quote, more than anything else, describes what it's like as a content provider trying to work with Google.
   
   I think the biggest lesson to takeaway from this last update is that the "Field of Dreams" style of writing ("If you build it, they will come"), is really the only reliable method: create quality content that delivers value to the readers, and let the chips fall where they may.
   
   The only alternative is continuing the same old game of trying to please the ever capricious and fickle "Big G".

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      sheilamyersposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I totally agree with you. I'm not going to write about the most popular topics or try to figure out all of the SEO stuff just to make the "Google gods" happy. I know they have some ties to HP and it is the most popular search engine on the web, but they're not the only one listing our hubs. Every search engine "crawls" websites and will list our pages. It doesn't matter to me where I rank in the search results. I don't do anything special to get my hubs noticed by the search engines, yet over half of my hubs have a high number of views. I'm writing and people are coming. To me, that means I'm doing something the people who are reading about certain topics want to read and they're the people who matter to me.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         It's a myth that Google has ANY ties with HubPages.   HP is a website like any other and gets its information from Google like any other.  As they're such a big site, their questions probably get answered a bit faster than mine, that's all.
         
         It's also a myth that you need to write about popular topics.   In fact, it's better not to, because thousands of other bloggers and article writers are doing the same, so competition is stiff. 
         
         "SEO stuff" isn't that hard.  It's just asking yourself, "what would people need to type into Google to find this Hub?", noting down the answers and making sure you use those words and phrases in your Hub.  Use the most suitable phrase in your title, a heading and in a couple of other places.  Sprinkle the others around (in headings or sub-headings if you can).

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   Nell Roseposted 10 years ago

   Writing quality articles means nothing to Google, I was doing really well, in fact better than I have ever been on here. My hubs were on the top of google, only a few but thats all it takes to make you successful, and then bomb! I am now down to less than 500 a day!
   
   Over night I might add! this was about three weeks ago, and still no better, so quality? nah, means nothing!

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      Chris Tylerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      That's exactly what I'm talking about. Trying to please Google is like that scene from "War Games": "The only winning move is not to play".

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         Nell Roseposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Exactly! I have even updated hubs because they say that's the best thing to do, but no not working! Just have to wait it out. But I am sure it will come back up, fingers crossed!

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   jansharesposted 10 years ago

   " . . . create quality content that delivers value to the readers, and let the chips fall where they may."
   
   Well put, Chris Tyler. You're right, that's all we can do for now. And keep our fingers crossed, as Nell Rose said. I will, however, continue my break and wait a few more weeks before creating any new content.

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