There’s been a lot of fuss over zoo animals lately. It’s not without warrant either. Google’s most recent updates have wreaked havoc on SEOs and webmasters alike.
Let’s take a look at what these updates were all about and what you can do to recover from them.
PANDA – What it Was (Roll Out Date April 19th)
Unlike Penguin which targeted spam techniques, Panda was designed to target content that was low quality.
Panda Recovery Suggestions
- Create unique meta titles and descriptions for every page
- Remove low quality or duplicate content from your site
- Reduce your ad to content ratio
- Increase quality of content (Edit grammar, increase research, include sources)
- Fix broken links within your site
- Reduce bounce rate
- Increase stick rate
- Decrease site load time
PENGUIN – What It Was (Roll Out Date April 24th)
This was an algorithmic change, as opposed to a human reviewer picking your site out. This update was designed to fight off common spam techniques that game the search engines.
Penguin Focused On The Following:
- Aggressive exact-match anchor text
- Overuse of exact-match domains
- Low-quality article marketing & blog spam
- Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links
Penguin Recovery Suggestions
- Rebuild spammy links with legitimate link sources
- Repurpose de-ranked site’s content onto a new domain and start over
- Submit a request to this form for reconsideration (if you think you were incorrectly penalized) – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEVxdmdRWFJRTjRoLWZVTHZkaTBQbkE6MQ
- Increase quality links pointing to all pages of your site
- Increase anchor text variation (over linking using the same anchor text was a big factor in this update)
- Reduce internal link building (reduce does not mean to stop)
These updates shook up the SERPs in a big way. If you were part of the fall out, I’m sorry, I feel your pain. It’s unfortunate but this is part of SEO. This doesn’t mean that SEO is dead. This simply means we have a new set of rules to play by.
Here are general Do’s and Don’ts in the new SEO climate:
DON’T
- Use spun content on your money site (duh!)
- Keyword stuff content
- Over link using the same anchor text
- Delete Your Links (unless they are on a de-indexed blog network)
- Fill footers with overly optimized content OR links
- Buy exact match domains
- Use doorway pages
DO
- Use all unique content on money site
- Create content with large word counts 600+
- Use a wide variety of anchor text in backlinking to the same page
- Optimize pages for more than one keyword phrase
- Use naked links in link building activities (no anchor text)
- Use aged domains
- Remove low quality content from your site (spun, low word count, swiped)
Sources:
http://searchengineland.com/penguin-update-peck-your-site-by-mistake-googles-got-a-form-for-that-119698
http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/google-over-optimization-penalty-exact-match-domains/
http://searchengineland.com/penguin-update-recovery-tips-advice-119650
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
http://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-recover-from-google-panda-effect.html
Were you hit by one of these updates? Give us a shout in the comments!
