October 31, 2011 in Articles, SocialStream SEO, Website Traffic Strategies by Conversion Leadership

Rethinking SEO In Light Of Google’s Panda Updates

Starting in early 2011, Google released a round major updates to the way search results are calculated and presented. Known as Panda, the updates were designed to hit low quality websites (known as content farms)

The results is that there have been a lot of major sites lose both rankings and traffic, and to make things worse, Google is promising that there are more changes on the way.

If your website was unlucky enough to see a drop in your traffic following any of these updates, you can take heed because in this article we’re going to reveal to you just what can be done to help the situation.

Understanding Google

Before we delve into the specifics of the Panda update, it’s worth taking a step back and remember what Google is and why it chose to make the changes it did.

Google is a search engine. It’s major goal is to provide the people who use its service with the best possible results for their search queries. The key to their success is to help return useful and relevant results because the more useful the results, the more people will use its service and that mean more people being exposed to it’s paid listings.

Basically, good results means more revenues.

As you can imagine, Google isn’t happy about people who try to trick the system with low quality content that ranks well without providing good value for its visitors. In Google’s eyes, serving up these bad content sites causes people to have a bad user experience and with a bad experience, less people will use the service.

In order to combat this, Google regularly updates its algorithm, or the way they rank web pages on their search engine. And although the Panda update is perhaps the biggest change in the recent years, the reality is that Google is constantly updating their algorithm to fight spammers who are trying to game their system.

What is the Google Panda Update?

The initial Panda rollout, 1.0, occurred on February 24, 2011 and took aim at those sites that boast thousands and thousands of low quality, user generated pages.

Google’s estimates put the number of search results pages affected by this update at 11.8% of all the search terms on the web. Among the sites most affected by this initial update were article directories and content farms, which can be seen in the chart provided by Sistrix.

Given the widespread effects of these changes, there’s a debate as to whether or not the Panda update can be called a true “algorithm change”. Regardless of the debate, there are three ways of thinking about Google Panda:

• A traditional algorithm update – with the number of existing sites that experienced losses in the Panda update, there’s no doubt that these changes represent a change in how the Google algorithm regards certain types of content.
• A new ranking factor – similar to PageRank or meta tag optimisation, a site’s “Panda score”, based on the metrics quantified in the update, will influence where new and existing pages fall in the Search Engine Results Pages.

The core of the Panda algorithm introduces a penalty for low quality content and the following indicators provide a good starting point for implementing strategies to correct issues uncovered by Google to improve your rankings and traffic.

Low Quality Content Indicators

Below are some of the most common indicators of low quality content. Resolve these and you’ll see you rankings (and traffic) improve again.

• Content is not original.
• Content provides no original thought, it simply repeats the thoughts of other articles.
• Content does not provide value.
• Content is not credible or trustworthy.
• Content is shallow or thin.
• Page was written by an expert and has depth.
• Page was not written by an expert and has an obvious lack of depth.
• Site contains multiple pages all with basically the same content SEOed for multiple versions of the same basic keyword phrase.
• Site has a poor navigation structure making if difficult to navigate.
• Content was written to rank for a particular keyword phrase, not to solve a user problem.
• You not recommend the page to a friend or share it?
• Page is riddled with ads or otherwise focused on making money as opposed to solving a readers problem or providing answers or solutions.
• Page has poor metrics
  • Bounce rate is high
  • Time on site is low
  • Number of pages viewed is low, or
  • Low search engine results page click though rate.
• Site has a low amount of branded.
• You would not feel comfortable submitting your credit card to the site.
• Site has poorly written content – misspellings and grammar.

9 Strategies To Improve A Website Impacted By Panda

If your site has been impacted by the Panda updates, follow these simple strategies and you could see things getting back on the road to recovery.

1. Improve site design/usability.
2. Reduce number of advertisements.
3. Remove or improve low quality content.
4. Remove duplicate content or pages with nearly the same content.
5. Avoid keyword stuffing (This means culling down Tag Clouds if they contain over 50 to 75 keywords).
6. Make social sharing buttons more prominent. Encourage users to share your content.
7. Make sure that the page delivers value to the reader.
8. Create new/non-textual content including video.
9. Improve page load speed.

The speed of a website is an often underestimated, but increasingly significant factor when it comes to search engine rankings. Google looks closely at your website page speed as part of its algorithm and so do we through our SocialStream SEO service. Ask us about how you can incorporate SocialStream SEO in your online business today.

From The Bookstore:

Sneaky Traffic Blueprint: 8 "Barely Legal" Traffic Generation Techniques To Help Generate An Avalanche Of Traffic To Your Websites Today!One of the biggest problems faced by online marketers is in driving enough traffic to their website in order to generate the kind of sales volume they...
Read More »

How to Get Web Traffic - Boost Your Rankings and Increase Your Traffic with Targeted VisitorsSTOP Wasting Hours Of Your Precious Time On Methods That Are Doomed To Fail…
Discover The Proven Methods You Can Use To Drive An Endless Stream...
Read More »

Sams Teach Yourself Google Analytics in 10 Minutes

Sams Teach Yourself Google Analytics™ in 10 Minutes gives you straightforward, practical answers when you need fast results. ...
Read More »