For those site owners grappling with drops in their organic search traffic (Google traffic) and are willing to follow the 'rules', there is a silver lining to this drastic change by Google of lowering their site's rank.
Being a novice site owner and not having prior experience in site maintenance can be a pain point in the aftermath of this change.Here are some priceless tips and guidelines that should ease your pain.
Panda Update
Launched in February 2011 by Google's Search Quality Team, Panda has gone through more than seventeen different changes.It was built to focus on a site's quality or uniqueness and accessibility of its content.
Panda's purpose is to identify and penalize sites that have duplicated content as well as those that have promotional material such as Adverts dominating their pages.By standard rule a site's content should achieve 60% uniqueness so duplicating of content should not be practiced.Your site's content should be more dominant on the page in comparison to adverts on the same page to achieve uniqueness of content.
Panda's purpose is to identify and penalize sites that have duplicated content as well as those that have promotional material such as Adverts dominating their pages.By standard rule a site's content should achieve 60% uniqueness so duplicating of content should not be practiced.Your site's content should be more dominant on the page in comparison to adverts on the same page to achieve uniqueness of content.
If you realize that your site has been affected by a drop down in organic traffic - that is traffic visiting from Google searches,there are ways to accurately analyse if the Panda Update has occurred on your site:
#1 Understand the Panda Update evolution
Comprehensive literature about the Panda Update change cycle can be accessed from various resources online .One of the best and most recommended is the SEO Moz site which is a one in all utility source of Panda Update's history.The literature there will give you insight on different dates of Panda Update's change cycle and with a date in mind it is then possible to then check with Google Analytics for a comprehensive web metrics analysis of your site.
#2 Analyse with Google Analytics
With a Panda Update date in mind use Google Analytics to process metrics of your site.Make sure you specifically request for Google's organic search traffic and a reasonable time period.The time period should be long enough to look at the trends of your site and short enough to notice the drastic drop of Google's search traffic on your site. With the Panda Update date in mind combined with analysis from Google Analytics, it will be possible to identify which Panda Update may have affected your site.
Solution to a Panda Update effect on your site
If by evidence from Google Analytics your site has been affected by the Panda Update, you need to identify your pain points such as:
NOTE: Sometimes in extreme and rare circumstances a website can be so extensively affected that it is recommended to have an overhaul re brand of the domain. However this is only pursued after all other options have been exhausted.
- Do your webpages have duplicated content that has also been duplicated in other websites online.
- Verify if some pages have a higher average bounce rate than other pages in the same domain.
- Does your site have inbound links passing to it from a site that is considered a content farm(a site that allows self-submitting content).
Resolution Practices
- Rewrite or revise the content on the affected pages to make them achieve 60% uniqueness in terms of originality.
- Utilize the Rel="canonical" tag to help Google identify original sources of information and filter out sources with duplicated content.This also helps Google "guide" you to sites that have high quality content and don't allow self-submitting content.
Penguin Update
The much 'anticipated' Penguin Update due to its ability to deal with over optimization of websites by unscrupulous online marketers,was released in April 24th 2012 by Google's Web Spam team.The team's focus was to specifically deal with practices such as: keyword stuffing,link spamming and repeated use of keywords in anchor texts on sites.
To fulfill your suspicion that your site may have been affected by Google's Panda Update,it is recommended just like in the case of the Panda Update,to understand the Penguin Update from resources such as the SEO Moz site.Hence by identifying the dates of the Penguin Update versions, use Google Analytics which will give a comprehensive analysis of trends of your site within a given period.
When using Google Analytics make a point to specify results from organic traffic as well as an analysis within a three month period to identify the date of your site's drop in organic traffic.
Solution to a Penguin Update effect on your site
In the course of identifying that Penguin has indeed occurred on your site,you need to start a recovery action by first identifying which among the point areas below are the cause of a Penguin Update effect.
- Overuse of keywords you are trying to optimize for on the pages affected.
- Anchor links passing to your site from one page to another within your domain or from external domains containing anchor texts that have 1 2 3 or 4 specific keyword phrases.
- Links passing to your site from a link network.
- Spikes in links caused by a site linking to your site from every page in its domain i.e from the site's footer.
Resolution Practices
If any of the above point areas are the cause of your Penguin Update penalty, implement on the following recovery actions according to the cause/point areas identified.- Revise your on page content and metadata to clean up keyword stuffing.
- Revise your links by diversifying anchor texts passing to your website.
- Pursue link extraction initiatives to remove links from networks.
- Pursue link acquisition strategies that are normal and up to date as possible.
NOTE: Sometimes in extreme and rare circumstances a website can be so extensively affected that it is recommended to have an overhaul re brand of the domain. However this is only pursued after all other options have been exhausted.
Yeah there are enormous speculations on how to recover from being hit by Google Panda and Penguin update. Some says that quality content, faster navigable content link, adding more elements for the visitors, modifying the layout and more, are the things that can help in order to recover from being hit by Google Panda/Penguin update. What they are saying are all true.
ReplyDeleteIt is because that's what I did on my site along with the advised and supervision of Panda Breakthrough recovery method personnel. He also manage to integrate the guidelines of Google such as metrics and static and more. Because of this my site bounced back and my traffic doubled in almost 2 days.
Yes its true what you say Randy.There are various factors to consider to recover Google's Panda and Penguin updates especially with accessibility which Panda was keen on and thats where your layout modification comes in.Layout elements such as clear navigation options without having too many of them and having navigation links in your footer,breadcrumbs in all pages except the Home page,having anchor links and a search box are some of the simple key areas to achieving accessibility.To increase on traffic as well by adding elements for visitors like call to action buttons which guide visitors to your landing pages to subscribe for membership, email or give details to acquire a product if you are an e commerce site.What some of these elements do is capture your visitors and guide them through your site.People like being guide without thinking twice on how to use your site.Google also checks to see if you have a way to test your site's performance like by using Google analyitcs which is a step they view as good optimization.
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