Google Panda WTF Case #90,303

I was looking to see where we ranked for our infographic marketing post today and was pleased to see us still ranking in the top 10. There are only a few other posts on the topic that are of any use and not just fluff, so when I saw who was outranking us, I kind of got a little pissed off. I thought I’d give an example that involves someone I know (am). Some of you may remember my rant about the buy espresso beans search results – we’ve been ranking top 10 ever since and we shouldn’t be at all.

From what I’ve been seeing in the SERPs, and I’m sure you have too, tons and tons of junk content still ranks. If you dig deeper into the actionable keywords like buy/review/best you’ll see an even scarier set of results. For the most part, the cliche “content is king” is looking like it’s 100% bollocks because links are God. I might hear from a couple of complainers that there are hundreds of ranking factors, but when it comes to tough keywords, it usually only comes down to links.

So the image below is a pretty accurate SERP result from a few different locations and people, so it should suffice for this post. As you can see, we’re ranked number 7 and right below us is a post from Mashable (which I’m surprised isn’t higher). The site that got my goat is from the Mono-Live site, which is a spam blog that is basically there to sell text links. The post has nothing of worth in it and the site is powered by tons of spam links and that’s about it….

At least Google got the first position right as Lee Oden’s post on the subject has been around longer, is well linked and as always, extremely well written. So I’d love to hear from you folks on similar cases like this where you’re getting bonked about by the SERPs but lousy content in this post Panda world. I will also be continuing my panda case studies as the year goes on, so stay tuned.