Was your web site Panda smacked? Panda What?!
Did Google’s new Panda update give you a high 5 or a smack down in the rankings?
Panda is a new algorithm from Google that updates their already complex method for creating Google search results. And with this update tens of thousands of sites suddenly found themselves with higher, or lower, Google rankings …and a rash of panic and internet rumors ensued.
Google has introduced this update which allows the crawlers to more deeply analyze your web site for relevant and unique content, trust authority, navigation structure, key word relevancy and more. The new algorithm seems to act more like an actual customer rather than a bot and intelligently browses the pages of your web site to review multiple items within seconds.
“Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries,” says the Official Google Blog regarding the release of Panda.
How Panda is Impacting SEO:
There is huge potential for more exposure to your web site if the Panda update impacts your web site in a positive way.
Google gurus have dubbed this round of algorithm updates as ‘quality-focused with caution', and a serious step-up since Caffeine. "Our classifier that we built this time does a very good job of finding low-quality sites," says Google.
With Panda, Google has specifically targeted what they deem “low-quality” sites, sites that are not content-focused; the Panda release primarily filters out sites that:
- Duplicate website copy and text.
- Contain very little relevant information.
- Contain no in-depth reporting or analysis.
Google admits that they can't make a major change without affecting some sites—and with this update some rankings will go up and some will go down. Google simply believes that “high-quality sites should be rewarded”.
The search giant was quick to point out that the new Panda update is independent of the Chrome Blocklist extension ...but they go on to note that, “however, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them.”
Google’s new Panda update is much more focused on a positive end user experience. If an end user performs a search on Google, the new Panda update will yield results that gives the user the most relevant results with web sites that are user friendly, easy to navigate and have a plethora of relevant content within.
Knowing what this update means and knowing the steps you can take to ensure that your web site will gain from it is definitely a step in the right direction.
What can I do to help my site get a Panda high 5?
- Build trust with Panda
Review your web site page content and make certain that your web site content is relevant to the keywords that you are trying to be found for. This will establish trust and keyword authority, Panda loves that!
- How easy is your site to navigate through?
Can an end user easily get from one page to another? If your web site pages do not have a universal main navigation system on each page Panda will leave your site and smack it down in the rankings.
- Page Load Time
Be sure that your pages are optimized so that end users don’t have to wait too long for the page to load; Panda is impatient and won’t wait!
Contact the experts here at Your SEO Today and request a free web site evaluation to see if your web site is Panda ready!
