The Quick Dirty Guide to Understanding the Google Panda Update
The Panda update is quite simply Google’s latest update to its very secretive algorithm which relates to how a website gets ranked by search giant. After the update, many people saw drops in their site traffic and page rank, but it doesn’t have to stay this way. There are ways to rebuild your reputation and figure out how to fix this! Here I’m going to show you everything you need to know about the latest update to Google’s algorithm as well as everything you need to know about SEO (search engine optimization) to move around its edges.
Why Did Google Make the Change?
Google implemented the first change, user reviews of sites, to see how much of the sites they were indexing and rating as high page rank sites were actually just gaming the system for SEO purposes. It turned out that an overwhelming amount of high PR sites were just manipulating loopholes in Google’s page rank system for their own search engine optimization benefit. They started working to correct the problem, and then we got the Panda Update. It’s only logical that they fixed the holes running in their system, if people can’t find trustworthy results with Google they’ll migrate to other search engines like Bing or Yahoo.
How Does Panda Change the SEO Game?
- Panda Score
In addition to the Page Rank score we all had to suffer through before, now you get to obsess over your Panda SEO Score too! This uses metrics like LSI and true relevancy to determine where you really place in the rankings.
- Penalties
If you’re caught backlink spamming, article spamming and spamming in general, it’ll hurt your Panda score and push you down in the search results. This could include having thousands of links on a single site like Ezinearticles, or putting too much effort into one area of SEO or a single keyword instead of trying to build organic SEO rankings from a variety of sources online.
Is Your Site in Danger of Being Affected?
A surprising number of top tier sites like Fortune.com and even Sony have been slapped with Page Rank penalties from Google for their violations of the new Panda SEO rules. You’ll be able to see how this affects their rating pretty fast; anything from duplicate content to bad backlinks and little tricks that used to bring up your SEO ranking can mess with your place in the SERPs. If you’ve seen your site slip, start checking for duplicate content or bad backlinks; go analyze who your inbound links are coming from and if they’re poor quality make sure you remove them.
One of the best ways to make sure you don’t have to worry about any new tweaks in the system is to only employ white hat SEO techniques. These will keep you safe from any of the pitfalls of using cheap tricks that just don’t work anymore. Pay attention to where you’re advertising, where you’re linking from, and what kind of content you’re putting out. Great content that informs and entertains will give you the best relevancy SEO rating, so don’t cheap out!
Now you know how the Panda update works and the first steps you can take to avoid problems with the new arcane policies. Add value to everything you put out online and you’ll never be a victim of Panda!
Contact us today to find out how we can help you with your SEO rankings organically, naturally and most importantly ethically! That is the only way to ensure stable SEO ranking results for years to come.
