For those who are new to blogging, Google recently released an update called Panda 4.1. It affected search queries and page ranks based on a website’s quality of content.

Even if you’re a blogging expert, Panda 4.1 will force you to change your content strategy. In terms of content, Google demands more and more with each update. It seems like just a few months ago all you had to do was post a new blog once a week. Now, you have to establish author credibility, cite reliable sources, and make sure your links are perfect.

That last one is where many companies mess up, even though it’s something they can control relatively easy. The problem is that most business owners just don’t understand what they’re supposed to do in terms of adding links to their blogs.

Jayson DeMers, a writer for Forbes, outlined a few questions businesses should be asking themselves about their blogging:

Does your content link out to useful and authoritative sites or pages?

Does it contain any links to potentially bad link neighborhoods?

Are you overusing internal linking?

Perhaps most importantly, who is linking to this particular piece of content?

Are you working at building high-quality links to this page?

These five questions are a good start, but understand that you can go into detail for each one. For example, the third question asks if you’re overusing internal linking. What that really asks is if you’re adding too many hyperlinks that direct readers to your own website (see what happens when you click on “blogging” in the first sentence). Adding a few internal links use to be fine – and even recommended. But now, Google just wants you to add one and move on.

Once you understand the rule, it’s easy to abide by it. We can help explain all of Google’s oddly specific content rules to help you improve your page rank.

To talk more about this, or anything else, please contact us. Thanks.