Google's latest update to their search engine ranking algorithm, code-named Panda Farmer made some drastic changes to the key factors responsible for providing relevant, high quality search results.
Although Google Panda was only meant to filter out low quality spam websites, many legitimate websites and blogs have found themselves penalized and losing a major part of their organic traffic. If you are one of the victims of collateral damage caused by the update here are some of the top tips to survive the Google Panda update:
Find and remove duplicate content.
This should be a priority, go through content on your websites, find all the duplicate content and get rid of it pronto. Not only the content copied from third-party websites but also content used on multiple pages across your website.
You might not have added duplicate content from third-party websites yourself but it could be user-generated content in form of comments or guest posts. Identifying plagiarism is easier than ever thanks to tools like copyscape.com and plagiarismchecker.com
Fixing content used on multiple pages across your website is easier than you might think, all it takes is adding a canonical tag in your HTML header. A Canonical link element notifies search engine crawlers that among the several duplicate pages a 'preferred' page is located at given URL and request them to index it instead of other pages. If you are using any of the major CMS like WordPress or Joomla this will only require installing any of the many SEO plugins available for free download.
Choose quality over quantity, always.
Google has made it pretty clear in their guidelines that websites should be built for readers not for search engines. You might have been able to score top positions using mediocre content and keyword stuffing but it will not be entertained anymore. Stop replying on methods like automated content generation using bots or outsourcing to cheap writers who don't even know what they're talking about.
As a webmaster make a note to provide informative, relevant content to your visitors and stop worrying about the keyword count or number of articles you can get for your dollar. If your website is about custom car parts stop posting articles about something that doesn't appeal your niche just to promote a sponsored link or spreading links to your new venture. Links from irrelevant websites won't do any good for SEO anyway.
If you maintain a strict quality standard for the articles that you post not only you increase the chance of getting better positions in search engines but also help you build an audience on social media.
Get Social, at least on the Internet.
I know webmasters aren't exactly what you'd call a social creature, most of us would prefer a computer screen over interacting with people. But then if you want to see your website succeed you must interact with your audience, start a discussion, answer their questions and most of all allow them to join your social networks. Highlight links to your fan pages, and add buttons to share your links on social networks.
Being active on social networks and discussion boards will not only open new doors of traffic towards your website but boost your reputation as a quality website.
Inbound links from Google+ circles, Facebook or Twitter will prevent your website to be flagged as a low quality resource by Google's algorithm. The logic behind this is that if your content is good enough readers would have shared it on social networks or linked from other high quality websites. But do not try to beat the system by spamming your links on social networks, spam will be filtered out by social networks as well as Google.
As reported by the Webvisible and Nielsen, 63% of consumers and small business owners utilize the World Wide Web, in searching for info regarding local companies that are US based. Another report claims that 83% of Canadian citizens make use of the virtual world for a variety of purposes. Therefore, just in Canada and US, small business owners can scope a lot.
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