Google releases yet another Panda update which impacts search rankings

Google has just released Panda update 3.9 which apparently will affect about 1% of websites hosted on shared, dedicated and cloud platforms around the world.
As usual Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm to favor high-quality sites, which publish original, useful and timely content relating to the core product or business offering.
These quality guidelines have been referenced numerous times in the Google Webmaster Tools and also on their company blog,
“Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals,” said Google.
And, this is a critical point.  It appears many small business owners are now preoccupied with the intricacies of the Google ranking system. Instead of focusing on building content they are increasingly getting caught up in technical areas such as how to find quality backlinks or overanalyzing keyword density on a particular page. Of course, both these areas are important and do play a role in a final ranking metric by Google, but it must be remembered that Google does not want you to build a website for Google. It wants you to a build a website that captures the hearts and minds of your users.  Consider the time spent overanalyzing technical data in Analytics and Webmaster tools versus the time spent deploying really interesting engaging and visual content on your site.   You may find two months of quality content marketing will push you up the rankings without any undue need to overanalyze web analytics.
Analytics should be used to track, tweak and correct any serious technical deficiencies on your site but be careful not to overdo it.
Google has now published over 500 search improvements to its ranking system in an effort to reward quality content publishers and this trend will continue.
Here is a good starter video, which helps lays down the foundations for a good SEO strategy on your site.