Unlike in the real world in the search engine optimisation world the Panda is the most terrifying of bears. In this case Panda is not a big cute fluffy bundle of furs that eats bamboo and struggles to breed it is the name that Google gave to an update to its search algorithm and so can have a massive impact upon where a website ranks in Google’s search engine results.
Google has announced this week that they are currently rolling out their latest Panda update and that the rollout will be complete by the end of next week. So if you have seen a drop in traffic from Google this week or do during next week then it is likely that this latest Panda update has affected your website. Google says that between 3-5% of search queries will be affected by this update.
What Does Google’s Panda Do?
Google’s algorithm (that’s the rules it uses to decide where websites should rank within its search engine) is composed of many parts. One of these parts is Panda which attempts to penalise low quality websites that have poor content. Some of the factors that can influence whether your website is affected by Panda or not include:
- Low word count
- Lack of relevant keywords
- Inclusion of “spammy” keywords
- Duplicate copy
When Google crawls your website it looks for signals to indicate what the site is about. One of the best signals is the text that your site contains. A search engine optimisation agency may want to rank highly for the search term “search engine optimisation”. Google will look for terms that occur most often on your webpage to try to infer what the page is about. If the page contains lots of words and phrases such as search engine optimisation, SEO and on-page optimisation then Google (and other search engines) will realise that your page is about search engine optimisation.
However, Panda looks to penalise sites that have low quality content. Google wants to provide its users with the best results for a search query and this means they need to figure out which sites provide the highest quality content. This is where factors such as word count play a part in your search engine optimisation activities. Google takes the attitude that if you are an expert in your field then you will have no problem in producing large amounts of content for your users. This is the reason that sites that have few words on them often do not rank particularly well in search engine results.
What Should I Do if my Website Has Been Affected by Panda?
The first thing to do is not panic. While nobody likes losing rankings and traffic to their website at least if you know that you have been affected by Panda you also have a good idea what you need to do to rectify the situation.
First of all look at the content on your website and ask yourself the question “How does a user benefit from reading this text?” You should be able to answer this question with phrases such as “The reader learns something” or “The reader is given information that will help them decide to buy”.
Look at the amount of text that you have on your webpage. If you are a famous brand such as Audi or Tesco then Google knows enough about you to give your rankings a boost for relevant search terms. For the rest of us Google relies on other signals to decide your website rankings. Aim to get around 400-500 words on a page. This may sound a lot at first but it’s about two thirds of a page when typing in Word.
Try to provide some in depth articles on your site. These will help you to convince Google that you are an authority in your specialist field.
If you have large portions of text that you have taken from other websites then remove that text. A caveat to this statement would be for ecommerce sites. Search engines appreciate that multiple sites may stock the same products and use generic product descriptions provided by suppliers.
Write text with humans rather search engines in mind. Google and Bing both now have software that can detect if the language that is being used is natural language. If they think that your pages have been written for search engines rather than users then you are likely to be penalised. Remember they are looking for high quality content for users not for themselves.
Spellcheck your text. Poorly spelling and punctuation can impact on your rankings. If you are not particularly proficient at writing well-structured content then consider utilising a copywriter to create copy for you.
Final Thoughts
You will not know for definite if you have been affected by the latest Panda update until the end of next week. I hope that you are not affected but in the event that you are remember that there are actions that you can take to help remedy the situation.