Google's Panda Update Still Got You Confused?

Yukinari84 said:

As we all know there have been a lot of new updates and changes within Google?s ranking algorithms lately aka their Panda/Farmer update.

Some marketers were affected negatively, others were not affected at all and some actually even saw positive effects from the update.

Google is always making updates constantly throughout the years, but a lot of marketers get "caught off-guard" because, honestly, they don?t do their due diligence and pay attention to Google and what they are doing.

If you are not paying attention to Google now, I urge you to. Google essentially tells you everything you need to know beforehand, all you have to do is listen.

But why does Google continually make all these updates?

Honestly, it's actually very simple.

All of Google's algorithm changes - past, present, and future - all have one key focal point behind it: Google's Corporate Mission - delivering the best quality of search results to their users. This is how they have captured, retained, and expanded their dominating hold on the search engine market and search market.

If you are still in the dark or afraid of Google?s Panda update and how it affects you as an online marketer, I hope you will find the following information helpful.

What Is Panda and Some Quick Panda History:

- Originally released on Feb. 24, 2011 (ver 1.0)

- Has had 3 more updates since the original release:

- Panda Update 2.0 (April 11, 2011)
- Panda Update 2.1 (May 10, 2011)
- Panda Update 2.2 (June 16, 2011)
​

- Panda is not really a new algorithm per se, but rather it?s basically another "overhaul" of their current ranking algorithm i.e. a new filter.

- Google has designed Panda to effectively identify what it believes are low-quality pages, so that they can be removed from their search results and replaced by a site which Google deems as higher-quality and therefore, more relevant.

- Here's what Panda does in a nutshell:

- Panda takes a bunch of sites that people like more and a bunch of sites that people like less, grades the sites based on a number of different factors that deal with the site's trustworthiness, credibility, and quality, and then compares the difference.

- So basically...Google takes all the sites that people like puts them together into ?Group A?. They do the same for the sites that people like less and put these in ?Group B?.

- Then, they analyze a number of metrics about both groups? sites (these metrics are vast and would take literally forever for me to go over here, but the important thing to remember is that they are all heavily influenced by user and usage data metrics) and essentially find the sites that people like more and the ones that people like less.

- Finally, they downgrade the sites that are liked less, and upgrade the ones that are like more resulting in more relevant and optimized SERPs for their users.​

How does this affect you as a search engine marketer?

First off, for those that are still stuck on the whole ?All-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful? view of Google, I urge you to stop that way of thinking because it is only detrimental to your business.

Plain and simply put, Google is just a machine. Yes, it?s a powerful machine that is constantly growing, learning and becoming more powerful, but the bottom line is that at the end of the day, Google is still just a machine. It only knows what you allow it to know, so keep that mind.

In my honest opinion, Panda is just another indicator of the direction that Google is taking as far as SEO is concerned.

As an online marketer who relies on SEO for making money, you are probably used to doing your keyword research, creating a site, posting good keyword content, making it accessible to the search engines, and then trying to get backlinks, rankings, and traffic to that site?all the traditional SEO stuff.

This is all still good practice, but you need to start digging deeper if you want your business to survive and flourish. Just traditional SEO alone is not going to be enough anymore because Google is not just looking at that stuff anymore.

You need to focus not just on traditional SEO practices, but you need to focus on your targeted audience, visitors to your site, and more importantly, the overall experience your site will deliver to those visitors.

Here are a few key things that I recommend you focus on and add to your SEO regime.

1. Site Design and User Experience.

The good SEO marketers that I know have been practicing site design that promotes a positive user experience for years. This is because it has so many positive effects e.g. more people linking to your site, more people contributing content to your site, generating positive social signals like bookmarks, shares, tweets, etc ., and many more similar positive secondary effects. Guess what? All of these are factors that the Panda update is designed to look for.

Some Site Design Tips:

- Have a clean and simple design; avoid unnecessary clutter.
- Avoid putting too many ads on your site or over-selling on your site.
- Use images and videos.
- Optimize the loading speed of your site and pages.
- Provide easy navigation throughout your site and a solid internal linking structure.​

2. Yes, Content Is Still King:

Having good content on your sites is more important now than ever. I?m not talking about the typical ?search-engine food? you see on so many ?standard? affiliate sites these days.

If you are focusing on content just for the search engines, I highly recommend you stop. It is not enough. Panda is designed to recognize which content is written for real readers, and which content is written just for SEO purposes.

Your content should make your readers want to share it, want to bookmark your site?it should be ?sticky? e.g. it should draw people back to your site.

You absolutely must think about your readers. In this industry, we hear ?Put yourself in the mind of your targeted audience" all the time. This is more important now than ever.

Some Content Tips:

- Focus on creating content that is engaging for your readers.
- Add images into your content.
- Make sure your content is free of grammar and spelling errors​

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3. Tracking User Metrics and Usage.

With Panda, Google is trying to sort out the best sites to display to their users, which means they are looking at a lot of things that traditional SEO marketers tend to ignore. For example:

- Do people spend a good amount of time on your site, or do they go away immediately when they come to your site? (bounce rate)
- If users are staying on your site, how long?
- How many pages deep are visitors to your site browsing?
- Your click-through rate from the search results to your site.
- The diversity of traffic that comes to your site.
- The quantity of traffic that comes to your site.
- How many users to your site are new versus return visitors.​

Final Thoughts:

I hope that you can find this information valuable. To be honest, this is just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to dealing with the latest SEO changes, but they are some of the main key factors that affect rankings.

By paying attention to the areas I have pointed out above and making the necessary changes where needed, you will be putting yourself in a much better position than those that are not paying attention or making an effort to change.

Finally, if you are using Google as your main vehicle for getting traffic to your sites, I cannot stress the importance enough of spending the time to learn about them. It may sound boring and time-consuming, but I can assure it's worth it 1000 times in the long run.

If you have any questions, please post them here and I will do my best to answer them as best as I can.

Yukinari

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bantoncookies said:

Yukinari,

Do you still do article marketing for CB products? which are your favorite article sites/web 2.0?

I find ezine takes too long to approve articles.. sometimes more than a week.

Thanks!

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softwareprogram said:

Nice article .. I like it google is machine I agree with it .. I wish I could fuck this machine as it hurt me with most of my sites

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