The Google Panda Update is more vicious than it looks

Since February, many companies that have seen their site traffic cut by 20-80% have been recovering from the Google Panda Update by trying many different things.  Some companies are still struggling while a few seem to have figured out what to do.

What is the Google Panda Update?

Google CEO Matt Cutts thought that the Internet was turning into a big mess and wanted to create an algorithm that would allow search engine users the ability to find the results they are looking for without having to sift through multiple keyword content farm spam sites.  Therefore, the Google Panda Update punished websites that overused key words, had low quality backlinks, and didn’t provide much value to the end user.  This change absolutely crushed many websites that thought they were following the rules.

Google’s has offered little advice beyond removing low-quality content and listing 23 questions you should ask yourself if your rankings dropped.  However, according to SearchEngineWatch.com, there have been few reports of websites that were hammered by Google finally reporting positive news until this week.  The following are some of the improvements or changes made to the websites that have allowed companies to start to recover from the Google Panda Update.

Recovering from the Google Panda Update | Actual improvements made

• Firing one SEO firm and hiring another company to acquire backlinks. We now know that low quality links can hurt your rankings.
• Hiring copywriters to write original, SEO-friendly product descriptions. Websites must decide what keywords they want to rank for, and write copy around those keywords that is unique, topic-focused, well-written, and checked for spelling and grammar.
• Restructuring bloated pages to increase page load speed. Google has been preaching about making the web faster for two years, most recently in April releasing Page Speed Online.
• Duplicate content has been removed.
• Using the canonical tag to return one preferred URL location (e.g.,www.example.com vs. example.com/ vs. www.example.com/index.html vs. example.com/home.asp.
• Making “better use” of 301 redirects (moved permanently).
• Adding noindex meta tags to SERP-like pages and tag clouds.  http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2072084/Google-Panda-Update-Recovery

While the secret to overcoming the Google Panda Update is still locked up tighter than the recipe for Coke, Google is leaving clues.  The more information Google provides, the more concerned it is that companies will find loopholes and abuse the system again for financial gains.  But if you’re a legitimate website looking to provide quality content to your end users, then following the steps above may help you overcome the results of the Google Panda Update.

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