Article contributed by Edgar Boutaric.
Since the 24th February 2011, Google has rolled out its Panda update and this has had some significant impacts on the way SEO have been carried out. The objective of the Panda update, according to Matt Cutts, is to “reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.”
The problem is that there are some genuine sites that offer some really quality content to the community that have been penalized by the Google update. So how do you deal with this algorithm modification? What changes should you make to your SEO strategies then? This is what we will be looking at in this article.
Ads on your sites
It is important that you pay attention to the amount of ads that your site have. According to some experts, there are some qualitative issues that are encompassed in the update and having too much ads on your sites can only hurt your websites ranking.
This is why it might be important that you limit the amount of ads on your websites to make sure that it does not trigger the Panda slap.
Original Content
This one is a no brainer. Content is king on the internet but with the Panda update this has been taken to a new level. It is important that you do not have duplicate content on your site if you want to rank high in the search engines. Forget about auto blogs and other scraping tactics as this will ultimately bring you down the results page.
It is also important that you pay attention to duplicate pages that are created automatically by your CMS and other e-commerce platforms. If this is the case make sure that you use the rel=canonical element in order to handle duplicate content issues.
Legitimate Scrapers
There are some sites that are “legitimate” content scrapers whereby they rely on other sources in order to publish their information. If you fall in this category then it might be important that you add value to their information. Instead of just rehashing the same content you should make sure that you add your own views to it to prevent Google from penalizing your site.
Authoritative Site
If you have a site that is made up of only 5 pages in order to get a few clicks, then you will have to re-consider your strategy. The Panda update is clearly targeting these sites and it might be important that you consider increasing the quality of your site. Adding some few pages regularly with some in-depth information that are really helpful for people will definitely help you deal with the algorithm changes.
In other words you should strive to become an authority on the subject and not stay a mediocre site.
Design and User-Interface
According to Vanessa Fox and Matthew Brown, you should focus on your website design and also on the user-interface in order to provide a great user experience. Make sure that your navigation is clear and that visitors can easily found what they came to look for. Indeed bounce rate can pay a major part in determining your site ranking on the search engines.
Engagement and Sharing
This has mainly to do with social media and how much engagement you can generate for your content. Make sure that it is easy for people to share your content across the various social media sites. You might also consider the addition of a Facebook like button on your site. This is really a breeze with the amount of plugins that exist nowadays.
Build thy brand
It might be important that you improve your brand signals. This is apparently what kept Ehow still up in the rankings after the Google update. A small site can achieve this by getting mentioned in tweets, Facebook shares and other social media sites. This will help raise awareness for their site and ultimately build their brand.
According to many SEO experts the recent Panda update is one of the most important that has been brought out by Google. Not only because of the changes that it has made in the search engines has ranking page but also by the uproar that been created by webmasters that feel that their site has been unjustly penalized. Hopefully the 7 tips listed above might be useful for you to deal with the recent changes in the Google algorithm and help you recover your previous rankings.
Edgar Boutaric is the founder of Blog Marketing Tools where you can find a lot of resources pertaining to marketing tools and blogging in general.
Cool Tips, Thanks for sharing this article!
Thanks for sharing… I am newbie for SEO
Check BJ regularly and I am sure you will get good SEO tips like this Google Panda one here! :)
Thanks sakhsam for post! credit for hard word is necessary. Some crazy people just copy paste the article and they index first and get good article other hand hard worker penalize by the google. So google panda help such a hard worker.
Exactly Suraj, Google Panda will reward the honest.
Nice tips. every site blogger should follow these tips
Great tips! It sure helps know what you need to do in your strategies for SEO after the Panda update. Thanks
Thanks for the sweet words Neil.
nice tips Edgar.. Panda has seriously affected many genuine sites also..
Yeah, I hope these sites will recover soon.
These are just the things that we all now should take into consideration. Google Panda Update is an eye opener or a reminder that we guys should remember that QUALITY is important. Great stuff. Cheers.
Exactly! Google Panda proved to be of great help to the honest and innocent and as an eye opener for the black hats!
After the panda update, I hope all website owners and bloggers will publish original contents on their websites and blogs. One well researched content per week is much better than 6-7 scrapped contents in a week time to go well with latest algo changes from Google
You’re right, the focus is now back on quality after the Panda update by Google!
Great SEO tips you are sharing here. I am sure we will need to work hard to come out with good original content in order to say Panda-safe! :)
Yeah, but if we do come out with great content, Panda will help us to increase our traffic and grow! :)
Hi dear! Thank you!
The Panda Update has a lot of people worried. Thanks for sharing this.
Yeah, but at the same time many are happy! :)
Spent hours a day to write my own articles and review posts.. still got slapped by Google Panda :(
Oh, that’s so bad Michael. Actually according to expert webmasters having a lot of reviews, affiliate products promotional posts, affiliate links in your blog may also be one of the reason in case you are affected by Panda update. It’s because most of the product reviews contain same content. Why not try doing less product reviews and more general user-helpful articles? I just checked your blog and I must say it’s very nice, just I noticed 3-4 product reviews on the home page. :)
I strongly agree with your statement ” This one is a no brainer. Content is king on the internet but with the Panda update this has been taken to a new level. ” because indeed it is. There is no better way than an original content. It is established that having an original content attracts more potential clients and drives more traffic to your site.
I didn’t even hear about the Panda update. thanks for posting this, I may have a problem with low number of pages on my website (as it’s online word guessing game, not blog) so I’ll need to sort this out
Yeah, you can solve this problem by starting a blog section in your site and writing a few pages about your game, how to play it, benefits of playing it, some tips, etc. You can even have a news section. :)
thanks, i’ll probably put up the archives of games first and news and blog second
Yeah, that will work for you. Make sure you add regular content in your site so as to have a good image in Google’s eyes.
Basically, Google is making things better for the good sites, and worse for the bad sites :-)
If you have your visitors in mind, and want to give them good value, good content, and a good experience, you will be alright. And your users will share it, and you will even be more alright :-)
Because of Panda Google, the honest one will receive the credits. I really love Google Panda. Keep me update about this. I hope this will continue since it’s a big help to me..
Yeh that right, after Panda Update , site relevancy major via pure content. Google Panda will reward the honest.
Google panda is there to help people to land on quality site and find what they are looking for and give credit to original author. Thanks for sharing
I’m in love with the Panda Update. It means that people can’t cheat their way into the search engines and only quality websites will float to the top.
It is creating it for more public interest target, use logic that would be fed to robots, fool the robot with keywords and tags named PUBLIC INTEREST
nice ones. first time heard of google panda.. hehe..
i think the first one is really important since most of blogger love to put massive ads in their blog.
few months ago i got my self kicked by google panda and it takes me a month to finally get normal. we rally need to know how to avoid it .
thanks to edgar…
wow!!!!! Really nice article.I didn’t know about panda.BuT now i understand…thanx admin