I am decided to write this article (Recovering from Google Panda Update Survival Guide) after hearing the numerous horror stories of massive traffic/SERP drop with Google search engine by our fellow webmasters. Surprisingly some of the experienced webmaster websites/blog got affected with this and they now seriously got worried about this panda update.
Fortunately i have no terrible experience with my blog(SakthiGanesh.com) and there will be reasons behind. I am going to share my story with this article.
But before going to other information, what i would like to share with my bloggers and readers are, “Don’t be panic, Be patient. You are not too late”
Google Panda – No More Enemy
Many of the webmasters are biasing the panda update for their traffic slap but frankly at this time Google is noble and doing some efforts to restore the quality of the SERP. This algorithm update focuses with relevancy, quality, website usability and user preferences that mean the site which satisfies the above criteria will got preferences with SERP while others got outranked by the algorithm automatically.
If someone is pointing out the areas you need to update and qualify for some profits, do you think they are your enemies? I hope you say No, that’s the point here with panda. Panda is not your enemy its your associate for your quality audit with your site/blog
Panda Quality Guidelines – Experts Pin points
Google is not keeping the algorithm as a complete secret but the popular search quality gurus Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts outlined the pin points of the panda quality guidelines
- Higher percentage of duplicate content present on the page/site or both
- Low amount of quality content present in a page/site
- The combination of higher percentage of duplicate content and lower amount of quality content on page/site
- Higher amount of unwanted (inappropriate) content/advertisements in the page
- Irrelevant (Unmatched) page title tag present in the page
- Content that projected with SEO Purpose ( No natural article) No human friendly content on page
- High (Increased) bounce rate on the page/site
- Low visitor length with the page/site
- Low percentage of returning visitors to the site
- Low CTR (Click thru Rate) with SERP(Search Engine Result Pages)
- Low/No inbound links to the page/site
- Low/No mentions of post/site from the social media
Lessons from the Guidelines
Remove the Duplicate Content
It was advised for long time that to remove the duplicate content from the pages/sites. Panda outlined the serious penalty to the duplicate content, Red signal for duplicate content. Don’t let the duplicate content present in the any part of your site pages/posts.
Increase the content quality
Like duplicate content, low content quality is also got some severe effect with panda. Its time to review your site posts/pages for the low quality content and update by rewriting with some quality information. Quality involves providing something useful to your readers to make them happy
Remove unwanted Advertisements and pop-ups
Google is also focusing with the website usability factors in mind. If your site pages are loaded with tons of Ads and annoying advertisements you will be ranked. Reducing the number of advertisements and make your readers feel comfortable reading experience is the key. I am not saying completely No, but whenever you plan to use Pop-up, ask this question by yourself! Why should I use this freaking this that leads to poor impression with my readers, why should not I use
Attention Grabber (Top of the every page) or Tool Tip (Inside Content) to monetize my blog/website.
That’s also the question from Google
Human Friendly Content
Writing the content only with SEO benefits in mind will caught you into trap. Write it for humans and not for engines, this is was advised for a long time. If you are listening at this time you will be vanished from the SERP without a trace.
Unfortunately most of our fellow webmasters are practiced to write for search engines only, they almost forgot how to write it for human friendly reading. Content written with the SEO benefits in mind is really shit of dump. Your readers are your customers who are doing to purchase of your products/affiliate links and not the search engines.
I understand you should not completely ignore the SEO friendly content, But it needs some practice like to write effective SEO copyrighting techniques. The SEO Copyrighting EBook will help you to write about the content that make your readers feel enjoy reading at the same time search engines find your content easily.
Reduce the bounce rate
Higher bounce rates red signal to every websites/blog. If you have the higher bounce rate then you got the red signal that you are doing something really wrong and you lose your traffic very sooner.
To reduce the bounce rate you would concentrate on website usability, poor website usability leads to higher bounce rate
The possible website usability factors leads to higher bounce rate are
- Low quality or poorly written content
- Hard to navigate to the content/pages that the readers actually looking for
- Annoying Ads makes the readers to frustrate
- Poor design to make impact with readers
To fix these issues you have to review your website architecture and page content and improve them wisely. Concentrate on the pages which has higher bounce rate and do some changes accordingly.
Increase the visitor length
The site which has low visitor length is definitely lose the SERP with panda update. Visitor length involves
- The time spend with your website by the visitor
- The number of pages visited with your website by the visitor
The possible reasons for low visitor length are the same usability factors i have mentioned above. Increasing the visitor length is the significant effect with the traffic boost.
Increase Returning Visitors
Providing the content with some benefits will makes your visitors happy and helps for their return visits to your website.
You can also techniques like
- Blog post subscription (Sends the e-mail reminder whenever the new post is
- Posted with your blog/site)
- Comment Thanks – Thank your readers for comments and inviting them for return visits ( Thank me Later WordPress Plug-in is handy tool will help you on this)
Increase SERP CTR
I have found several times that the websites having the higher CTR will get more priority with the SERP.
For example if the Site A is present in the 5th position for the particular keyword position and got some higher CTR than other listings ,then the site have the highest chances to outrank the other sites and get some boost with SERP ranking .
To increase the SERP CTR, you should optimize Meta title and description. That’s not meant that to optimize it with SEO approach, but to add some values to make your visitor find the information helpful (Use call to action, power words)
Do Keyword interlinking
Do proper keyword interlinking for optimized navigation ,use the anchor texts to the related pages as reference with your posts. You can do them by manually by reviewing all the posts or doing with the help of external tools.
Note:
If you are having the wordpress Blog, then you can find the SEO Smart links plug-in helpful for auto linking keywords with the related posts of your blog
Try Social Media – Increase social mentions
We are in the age of social communication, and we have some great social media websites to get communicate. You can take the advantage of social media to promote our service/products/websites. By participating with social media you can increase the social media mentions will help to get stick with panda update.
Social media mentions are not just social media shares where you just share your stories. Whereas the social mentions involves doing others to mention your name/brand/posts with their conversation
For E.g
- Twitter retweets
- Facebook likes
- Posts Resharings
Hope this Google panda Survival Guide will help your site/blog from recovering from the update. If you have wants further information or would like to add your thoughts, feel free to comment. Thanks folks!
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