Google Panda was released on 2011 and its both boon and curse for the Seo websites. Before we move to recovery Panda tips you should be aware that Panda is a domain level penalty. Panda is algorithm iteration and according to Mat Cutt sites are penalized for over Seo optimization. So, avoid the black Hat Seo techniques and give more attention on quality content and increase the social media presence. Google Panda actually teach us the importance of targeted keywords and its need in a post. By the targeted keywords slowly you can increase your global traffic visitors.
Before going to recovery first we have to understand the kind of websites Google panda is going to affect.
- A website with thin content.
- Website working as a content farm.
- Website with useless indexed pages in Google.
- Website with bad SEO infrastructure.
- Duplicate Content.
- Too many Advertisements.
- Grammatical errors.
- Slow loading time.
- Black hat SEO
- Too many broken links
- Weak meta description
The steps to recover from Google Panda attacks:-
Good Quality Content:
Write a quality content which will increase your traffic. Quality content means to write a complete post with targeted keywords, and also the post should be optimized with targeted keywords instead of random posting. Google takes quality and length content very seriously and there are certain things which you should keep in mind including the word count while posting an article or blog. For example, a post like “How to recover from Google Panda” can be written in 5 simple steps, or could be written in detailed how-to guide like this. Now, we know which one a reader would prefer, but how a search engine will know? When you write a detailed article, you cover more keywords and you add more information in your writing piece. According to an SEO debunked study, articles with longer length ranks fairly well.
LSI words:
Here is a food for thought: How do you think a search engine rank a webpage? Search engines uses algorithms to decide post ranking. How do you think a search engine will give you exact results for your search query? Here comes LSI words come into picture, which helps search engines to understand exact categories for your article. Beside this, you use bold, italics, Keyword in H1, H2 and H3 tag to make your content more search engine targeted. You maintain a certain ratio for Keywords density. I know it all sounds hard but look at the screenshot below.
Duplicate content:
Google takes duplicate content very seriously, even if it’s on your domain or cross posted on other site. Too much duplicate contents will affect your search engine presence. You have to work on each and every detail of your site structure and SEO minutely and make sure you are not serving any duplicate content. Google also takes plagiarism very seriously but the algorithm is not mature to really figure out difference between original and copied content, you need to work manually to fight against plagiarism. Also make sure you are using URL canonicalization. You can use Robots.txt to stop indexing of unnecessary and unwanted part of your website.
Though Google claims that their new Content farm algorithm is perfect to fight against Auto RSS content generation blog still some confusion exist. Moreover, because of the fact that too many posts are getting de-indexed from web search. The only solution to this is fight against plagiarism. You should taking plagiarism seriously as soon as you see any website copying your content. So far 75% of request has been successfully reviewed and copied URL’s are removed from Google. Missing this point will create post duplication issue, and you might see other site is stealing your hard work and traffic.
When you find out all your low quality content, find all copied posts using Anti plagiarism tools and report it to Google. I have seen many of such posts started getting traffic, once all copied content are removed.
Learn SEO:
If you want to increase your traffic for your website, you should learn SEO first. Without SEO, your future will remain unpredictable, as one major algorithm change can take away everything from you. Once you know basics of SEO, you can be ready for any algorithm changes and tweak your website to meet new changes. Here are few things which you should start with:
- Keyword Research
- Keyword Optimization
- How to build Back links
- On site SEO
- Robots.txt
- Social media promotion
SEO friendly WordPress Theme:
Starting your career with free WordPress themes is good one but with time you will able to realize premium WordPress themes are way better than free WordPress theme, epecially the time you started using Thesis Theme, you don’t have to worry about tweaking your theme to make SEO friendly. If you are using a free WordPress theme, you should check your theme for proper heading tags and if this theme is SEO friendly or not. Or else, make your life simpler and grab Genesis theme. If you are not much of an SEO guy, you can install this theme and make your sites more SEO friendly. Make sure you put no-index attributes for tabs, categories and all useless pages using Thesis option panel or Genesis option panel. If you still can’t afford premium themes, start using plugins like Robots meta to add no-index to all useless pages of your websites.
Social media promotion:
Google+ votes, Facebook likes, Tweets and Delicious worked for me great time to boost up rankings. You can always start with social media promotion by creating own group on Facebook or on IM. You can hire any third party sites which offer such services. I have optimized my old posts for specific Keyword and then promoted them across different social media sites. You can see huge ranking improvement and you can try the same for any of your sites too during posting.
External links:
If you are one of those who are selling paid links or doing paid reviews about anything, you should stop doing it. Linking to bad neighborhood will significantly make difference in your search engine ranking. If for any reason you need to link to any bad site, use no-follow attributes. Same goes for an affiliate URL. Though Google doesn’t give much weight to no-follow attributes, but it does make a difference. It’s a myth that too many external link will affect your ranking, if you are linking to legitimate and useful content its ranking will not go down or will not be affected. So you have to take extra precaution when you are linking to other sites, especially if you are running a multi-author blog, you should make sure that link or guest post is coming from bloggers in the similar or relevant niche.
Following changes worked for me to recover from Google panda effect:
- Removed data from search engine snippets
- Removed all Broken links
- Removed un-necessary pages from search (Noindex or 404)
- Keyword optimization for all old posts (Improved the quality with updated info)
- Social media promotion after Keyword optimization (Google+, Delicious, Digg)
- Removed duplicate content
- URL Canonicalization ( replytocom, feedburner links)
Apart from all the above, also take care of more SEO optimization on-site and backlink building. Moreover, the backlink building was more targeted for internal pages instead of just homepage. There is no surety if ads actually help to lower down panda effect because there are many sites with above average ad/content ratio that rank fairly well. Keyword targeting is must and highly recommended post the Panda update.