It is now two years since the Panda rolled out. However the actions/approach that site owners or content creators need to take to be Search Engine friendly hasn’t really changed. Go for quality content, read what the search companies recommend (follow that advice) and target the visitor and their interest for your online advantage (not playing the system).
Small and local businesses can thrive in this environment. Sharing in depth knowledge, insight and advice will attract and engage an audience in a way that many larger less nimble organisations will find had to replicate.
Those hit hardest by the series of Panda iterations are sites who have built a business model that is/was highly dependent on a small group of search engines operating in a particular way. Search Engines have moved on and that dependency is exposed as significant flaw.
Search Engine Land have posted a series of three articles that look at how some of the hardest hit companies have fared since the original algorithm. Consider the hurdles and issues they face – they are probably not hard for you to avoid in fact doing thing differently might be you advantage.