Panda vs Penguin – What’s the difference and why does it matter to Google?
Differentiating between Panda and Penguin
Pandas originate in China – which is a very large land mass. When you think of Panda, think of your content – the largest pieces of your website.
Penguins travel together and you will often see them waddling in videos and images. Think of Penguin as the individual links to and from your website.
So now that you know the difference between them, let’s dive into how they help or hurt your hotel.
Hotel Content Marketing and Panda
You’ve just written a fantastic piece of content for your hotel website. You’re excited to get it out to your audience and just know it will help increase your bookings, get more newsletter signups or add value to your hotel brand.
Think of your hotel content as a first edition novel. While many editions can be published over time, they become less valuable than the original. Let’s take a closer look at Panda penalties and how that affects your content.
Google crawls your site and sees you have:
- New content – check
- Websites linking to it – check
- Is it unique? Can it be found on thousands of other websites? Is it valuable to your audience or industry?
All of these factors contribute to whether Panda rewards or penalizes you in the search engine’s results.
Hotel Link Building and Penguin
The same thing can be said for your hotel link building efforts. Did you buy text links because you thought they were the “quick and easy” way to rank in the search engines? Do you link to sites that are considered quality websites? What type of sites link back to yours? Are they only directory or article sites? Some people (misguidedly) think having a high number of back links automatically boosts your search engine rankings. It’s not about quantity, but quality. You don’t want this to happen to your link building efforts.
Panda and Penguin – How They Affect Your Hotel Search Engine Rankings
By now, you have probably figured out that creating unique, entertaining content and getting the content linked by valuable sources plays a significant part in your hotel search engine ranking results (SERPs). Think about the following two questions when creating and sharing new content on your site:
- ONE: Is my content really unique and engaging?
- TWO: Will quality websites want to link to or share my content?
These are the two questions Google asks (along with a million other algorithm questions) when they look at your website and determine if you will be affected adversely by Panda (content) or Penguin (link) updates. If you have been patient and done a good job in both your content and your link building efforts, you might just find your reward in higher search engine rankings over time.
For more on how your hotel or brand can incorporate unique, quality content, Contact us
Original article by Nicole McGovern
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