Winning The Google Panda Update War
Google Panda Update
During the first few months of 2011, many web site owners have been alarmed by a sudden drop in their search engine rankings and traffic. For many, this is the result of the google panda update, a major change made by Google in the way it ranks sites. Some site owners have noticed a drop of up to 50 percent in their visitor numbers as a result of the changes.
So what is the reason for the Google panda update? The company themselves have stated that its aim is to remove low quality sites from high ranking positions, and at the same time to enable better rankings for good quality sites. The problem for webmasters who think they have been hit by the google panda update is to identify exactly what is meant by low and high quality.
The company’s own statement as to what kind of sites were targeted by the google panda update includes in its definition content that is badly written, and also scraper sites, containing copy reproduced from other sites. Another category defined as low quality by the google panda update is content that is not useful – that is, has a low degree of relevance to the keywords that were used to find the pages.
How to check whether your business website been affected by google panda update?
If you have noticed a sudden drop in your traffic in the first few months of 2011, there is a possibility that you have been affected by the google panda update. To check this, you can go to Google Analytics, look at non-paid traffic in the Search Engine report in the traffic sources menu, and click on google. Click on keywords and the graph will show if there has been a clear drop. You can also use advanced segments to find more detailed information. This will show you which specific pages have been impacted by google panda update.
So what do you do if you find you have been affected by google panda update? Your next step is to analyze what factors in your site have caused google panda update to penalize you. In carrying out this analysis, there are two points you have to bear in mind. One is that google panda update penalizes whole sites, not individual pages. This means that if there are some pages on your sites that google panda update has marked down as being of poor quality, the ranking of the whole site will be affected, even if some pages are of good quality. The second point to remember is that in carrying out the process for Google Panda update, the company started with an analysis by humans. In other words, their main criterion is the appeal to humans, not to robots.
Winning the Google Panda Update War
In looking at the factors that could have caused your site to be hit by google panda update, it becomes clear that they are grouped into four main categories. The first category is on-page content. This could be a high percentage of duplicate content, including duplication between pages on the same site, especially when combined with a low percentage of original content. Another reason for being targeted by google panda update could be the content on the page not matching the search terms the page ranks for, or another possibility is unnatural language including keyword stuffing or over-optimization.
The second category for being penalized by google Panda update includes a low click through rate from the results pages, low visitor numbers and a low percentage of first visitors returning. The third main category that is targeted by google panda update is inbound links – low number and low quality, including few links from authority and social media sites. The fourth category concerns ads – high ad to content ratio, including ads above the fold, and low relevance of ads to the content.
If you realize that you have been impacted by Google Panda update, the main suggestion from the company themselves is that you should set out to improve the quality of all your pages. In particular, this means removing low quality pages, so as to improve the ranking for your high quality pages. One of the most important things you need to do to combat Google Panda update is check if you have content reproduced from other sites. Replace these pages or remove them with robots.txt. You should do the same with pages where you have duplicated your own content, and edit pages that contain keyword stuffing.
Overall, in order to correct the Google Panda update judgment of low quality, you have to try to look at your pages with an objective eye. Remember that the Google Panda update analysis puts humans first, so aim to improve the user experience and make your content more accessible. Bear in mind too that Google Panda update ranks videos as providing high quality so increase the number of these, and promote your pages on social media sites.
Once you have made all the changes you can think of to correct the judgment of Google Panda update, you can only wait and see. Keep checking your traffic in Google Analytics to make sure there is no further drop. Above all, remember that Google Panda update is all about quality. Think what you like on other sites and use that as a criterion, and you will not go far wrong.
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