Googles’ New PANDA Algorithm Buries Top Ranked Websites
When Google changes a parameter of its algorithm, the SEO world stops for a few seconds. That’s what happened last month when Google released THE Panda… Learn more about how you helped change Google!
The goal of Google Panda is to clean the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) by pushing the poor quality websites down in the rankings (where they belong). Sites such as directories and advertising sites, link farms or auto generated content farms took a big hit, which is good news for most of us.
But what exactly is the Google Panda update? How does it affect your website?
Google Panda is HUMAN!
What Google has been trying to do for many years is to emulate human behaviour in order to reflect what users would have chosen on the first SERPs as if humans were compiling the results themselves. This is very difficult to do as people`s behaviours may vary a lot and you need to get billions of queries in order to get results that reflect what users actually want to see.
To make this happen, Google tracks everything via the free tools it provides and that we are using everyday, such as Google Search. Have you ever wondered how they can track everything and what they do with all this information.
The answer is simple: cookies! (Think of Google as “The Cookie Monster!) Each time you are on Google and do a search, the world’s most famous search engine installs cookies on your machine and starts tracking and analyzing what you do. For example: Did you land on a website and then press the back button right away? How long did you stay on the website before “bouncing back” to Google for a similar search? By gathering information from Google Analytics as well, Google builds a surprisingly accurate picture of the relevance of the information you found online.
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot – a cautionary tale.
When you run a business and invest thousands of dollars in Search Engine Optimization, appearing in the top 10 results is what you want, and the closer to the top of the results, the better! Every once in a while, you even type in your most important keywords into the search engines and check to see where your website is listed.
“YES! I am on the first page! (Phew!)” The feeling is great, isn’t it? But what will Google think if you leave the page without clicking any of the top 10 listings? Google will take away from that behaviour that the first 10 results were not relevant enough.
What if you click your listing to make sure your link is working, look at your website a few seconds and press the back button to go back to Google to see who else is showing up? Google may think the information on your website wasn’t relevant enough and may reconsider displaying your listing on the first page…
These situations are examples illustrating how you can kill your rankings yourself without knowing it.
The lesson: Don’t spend too much time on Google looking where your website is appearing on search results. Do spend more time on your website. You can, and should analyze the results of your work by using different tools.
What do I do to prevent my site from taking a hit?
There is lots of different advice we could give you, but it wouldn’t be effective without analyzing your website first. We can give you a few SEO tips which are good for any website:
The first and most important tip would be to focus on creating relevant and “sticky” content on your site that makes people want to spend more time on it.
Here are a few additional points to consider:
- Even if the design of a website is not important for the search engines, try to have a clear attractive website to have people stay longer on it and browse through several pages.
- Be sure that your pages and images load fast! otherwise, you may lose your visitors and rankings at the same time. Have a good hosting firm to host your site on a fast, stable server.
- Avoid pages with too many links on it. Some relevant links with good anchors assist good navigation and are relevant for the search engines in general.
- Don’t duplicate content from other websites without adding any value to it. You will be banned from the rankings at some point and your entire domain may suffer from this.
- Ensure people that it is safe to browse through your site by inserting confidence builder logos (especially if you are selling products or services on your website). It is also important to have all the legal pages, such as your privacy policy, that are required on a professional site easily accessible.
Conclusion: if you want to tame the PANDA, be honest with your SEO practice: you will be rewarded by having better rankings.
And keep on reading our blog and newsletters for more tips, news and relevant information about Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing.
Contact us : Support@greatsol-seo.com or Call us at 1-877-643-6199
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