Pandas, Penguins and the Kafkaesque World of Search Engine Optimisation

The Art of Search Engine Optimisation

Do you know the novel, The Trial, by Franz Kafka? If you do, you’ll know how Joseph K is arrested and unable to find out anything about his arrest. He can’t even find out what crime he has allegedly committed. In this nightmare world, how can he defend himself when he finds it close to impossible to find out much about the process that his trial will take? And that is a bit like trying to find out about the art Search Engine Optimisation. 

Every company that has a web presence will want to rank well on search engine results. There is however, a degree of Kafkaesque mystery surrounding the art of search engine optimisation, or SEO. It is certainly not an exact science and thus it is not inaccurate to refer to it as an art. There is, though, mixed in with the mystery a fair degree of quackery and no small amount of snake oil on sale.

Do a search on Google for Search Engine Optimisation and you will be presented with enough material to fill a long lifetime. It is not just the quantity of material available that presents you with a major challenge; it is, also, the ability to assess the accuracy and quality of the material.

Bias for Text

Search engines began their lives as academic research tools, and it is for this reason that they are biased towards text. Academics used the early search engines to search through text. Curt Franklin explains that 

‘When most people talk about Internet search engines, they really mean World Wide Web search engines. Before the Web became the most visible part of the Internet, there were already search engines in place to help people find information on the Net. Programs with names like “gopher” and “Archie” kept indexes of files stored on servers…’

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine1.htm

Today when you use a search engine, you type a word or phrase that the search engine then looks for. Therefore, a website that has the right content, in other words, a website that is optimised for that particular content, stands a greater chance of being found than less well optimised sites. As you have probably heard, content is king. The obvious question, and some people have been asking this question for some time, is whether this way of doing things is the best thing for internet users, and by users I mean visitors to your web pages.

The User Experience

This is where the quackery gets heavy and the snake oil flows freely. For years now there have been people who have made it their business to get your business to the top of the search engine rankings. Some would promise to get you to number one, a bit of quackery that should warn you to think about saying don’t call us we’ll call you.

No one could guarantee to get you to number one because no-one could be absolutely certain of all the things that Google’s algorithms would take into account, and as Google is responsible for the overwhelming majority of searches that is the search engine that counts.  

However, over time plenty of people developed the skills to ensure that your pages would rise up the rankings. The problem was that these techniques necessarily gave primacy to what would optimise your web pages for searches whatever the detrimental impact that might have for the visitors to your web pages. Search Engine Optimisation experts would consistently repeat the mantra that content is king, but that didn’t mean, though, that it had to be good quality content. 

Panda, Penguin and the New SEO Landscape

When you think about it, there’s something a little bit back to front about a system that ignores the very people for whom it is meant to be designed. It was, though, a fact that websites could rank well even though they were virtually unusable by the visitor. The people at Google came to recognise that this wasn’t quite right. Thus starting on 11 February 2011, Google updated its algorithm. This was the beginning of the downgrading of poor quality sites.  This update to the algorithm was given the code name Panda. Jen Thames says that

 ‘…Google Panda, the latest Google search algorithm which aims to promote the high quality content site by dooming the rank of low quality content sites. Since its release and updates, many sites have been shown to be terribly affected by the algorithm…’

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/google-panda-tips/

Panda was followed on 24 April 2012 by a further update code named Penguin, which itself was updated twice, Penguin 1.2 and Penguin 1.3, on 26 May and 5 October 2012 respectively. On 22 May 2013 Google released Penguin 2.0. If that wasn’t enough, on 4 October 2013, Google updated this with Penguin 2.1. Some SEO experts regard Penguin as something close to a revolution in its effect on how SEO will have to be carried out in the future. Jayson DeMers tells us that

‘Penguin’s job…is to devalue manipulative links. It does this to penalize websites that use one or more of the following tactics… paid backlinks, low quality backlinks (typically generated using automated tools), large numbers of links with optimized anchor text, excessive link exchanges, text advertisements that pass PageRank, other types of links listed on the link schemes webpage’ http://www.searchenginejournal.com/penguin-2-1-changed-since-2-0-recover/

This year, 2014, has seen Google refine its Panda update further with Google 4.0 in May and 4.1 in September. Panda 4.0 is again aimed at rewarding high quality content. Panda 4.1 refines this process even further, but of course we don’t know quite what is being looked for – apart, that is, from high quality content. This persistent tinkering (actually Panda 4.1 goes beyond tinkering) is something that we will probably have to get used to. Jason DeMers suggests that this could happen as frequently as quarterly.

Black Hat and White Hat

What does all this mean for how webpages are optimised from now on? In very simple terms you can see webpage optimisation running on spectrum between two extremes. At one extreme you have what some people call white hat SEO. That’s the good end where you find all the things of which Google approves. At the other end, you have what some call black hat SEO. That’s the bad end where you find all the things of which Google disapproves. In the words of pushon.co.uk:

‘Search Engine Optimisation as with all things in life has a good, wholesome, fair and right way of doing things and a bad, unfair, downright naughty way of doing things. To describe the two SEO methodologies the terms “White Hat” and “Black Hat” SEO were coined.’ http://www.pushon.co.uk/articles/top-5-white-hat-and-black-hat-search-optimisation-techniques/

 It’s not exactly black and white because it is on a spectrum. Thus as you move further towards each extreme more things of which Google approves or disapproves are found. And what you don’t know is precisely where the dividing line between the black and white will fall. Some people think it may vary depending on which pages are being looked at.

Welcome to the Kafkaesque world of SEO.

Garry Costain is the Managing Director of Caremark Thanet, a domiciliary care provider with offices in Margate, Kent. Caremark Thanet provides home care services throughout the Isle of Thanet. Garry can be contacted on 01843 235910 or email garry.costain@caremark.co.uk. You can also visit Caremark Thanet's website at www.caremark.co.uk/thanet.