The Rise of The Panda and The Penguin:
Google’s Powerful SEO Algorithms
By Vicky in
Google SEO Optimization:
They may
sound cute, but these animal-inspired algorithms can be a webmaster’s worst
nightmare. If you find your site metrics fluctuating more than usual, then you
may be experiencing the effects of Penguin (now version 2.1 or 5) and Panda.
Both of these algorithms carry a powerful impact on a website’s rankings. This
is especially evident in most keyword-targeted search engine results pages
(SERPs), thrusting back once-popular websites a few more pages than their usual
front row.
Is Your
Website Affected?
If your
content focuses on quality and originality, perhaps no. However, if yours is
one among the many sites that deploys scrapped content and thin backlinks,
there’s a great chance that you’re going in for the spiral.
Each of
the algorithm updates highlight the improvement of search results quality;
analyzing and eliminating factors which may give some sites unfair leverage in
the rankings. Low-quality links, domain name advantages and even content worth
are being evaluated and are coherently weighed to match the keyword
requirements.
To date,
Search Engine Roundtable’s recent poll has revealed that 72 percent of sites
were hit by the new Penguin algorithm and a chunk of 19 percent disclosed that
they were not able to recover with version 2.0. The website Search Engine Land
revealed that Panda, a rolling content update chomping over feeble web content,
has confirmed affecting 3.1 percent of English queries along with its other
impact.
Google
has intended to eradicate spam search results to improve the searcher’s
experience with these new updates, thus sparking a new trend for SEO and
content. If your website has been pushed back from the first few search engine
result pages, it’s time for you to be aware of Panda and Penguin and learn how
to “befriend” them.
Google
Panda’s Dance of Demotion
The Panda
Algorithm was launched in 2011 and has been the focus of many webmasters and
SEO companies. Aimed to reduce the rank of low-quality websites (also known as
“thin sites”), it intends to return higher-quality sites at the top of the
search results. This creature degrades low-quality web pages and has caused a
giant surge within the rankings of news websites as well as social networking
sites. It is also the culprit known to have dropped many sites containing
massive advertisements.
Google’s
search spam head Matt Cutts has already revealed that recovering from Panda can
be a bit tricky. It only takes a little poor quality content to hold down
traffic on a website. Whereas rewriting can be an option, it is vital for an
SEO writer to emphasize high quality spins in order to bring additional value
to the site.
Panda
updates are now rolling out monthly, with each update displayed in a real-time
manner as opposed to manual push-outs, as it was before. The latest update
rolled out on July 15, which is a fortunately, a milder blow compared to its
previous updates.
Penguin
V. 2.0’s SEO Chase
With
Google’s Panda eyes closely on content, Google’s Penguin algorithm chases after
the links pointing to a page and its entire content. Despite the former having
an effect on the larger chunk of search results, the Penguin updates are more
evident to many SEO based sites. The importance of this latest algorithm heavily
depends on SEO writing, wherein keywords are strategically seeded to improve
the site’s SERP ranking.
More than
50 percent of online marketers revealed that their site’s organic search engine
rank has dropped as a result of the newer version of the Penguin. This can be
associated to unnatural links, keyword-stuffing and other irregular content
creation, which degrades the site’s overall SEO score. When it comes to Google
Penguin, copywriting is a serious issue, and it’s recommended to check with
your SEO writers in discovering what is best for your site’s content.
Recovering
from Google’s Panda and Penguin
Matt
Cutts has revealed the softer side of Panda, which is a more fine-tuned
algorithm. However, this is still a powerful threat to be wary of, and webmasters
should always keep an eye on how this little set of commands can make a great
impact on their site.
Keeping
track on these algorithm updates and analyzing them can be fairly challenging.
Fortunately, there are tools available on the web that can help you decipher
these numbers. The Panguin Tool is one of the most convenient utilities to help
you trace the correlations of your analytics and the Panda and Penguin updates.
You can log on with your Google Analytics account with this utility, and you can
see the organic search visits along with the timeline of procedure updates.
It’s All
About Putting Quality In the Content
Being
aware of the numbers can help, but you have to do something with your content.
Web owners with a “thin site” can find this the perfect time to overhaul their
site’s content and look to suit Panda and Penguin’s call for quality. Sites
with good content make their way to the top of the search pages, while those
with copied, scrapped and archaic content will go down the rank so far that
they will be completely undetectable. Using text to replace images to display
important content is now recommended, which implies that SEO writers now play a
crucial part in the web’s general content.
“If you
are not ranking higher as you were in the past, overall it is always a good
idea to look at the quality of the content in your site,” says Cutts in
disclosing Panda’s integration to Google’s indexing process. Webmasters are now
required to “come up with something that is original, something that people
would really enjoy.” These kinds of things, he adds, are those that are likely
to rank higher in Google’s pages. This now debunks common black-hat tricks in
order to leverage in search engine rankings.
Google
itself has released a list of tips that will help a website owner to find their
way back to the top of the search engines, in the most appropriate way.
Creating a useful, informative site focusing on readers, not search engines, is
one way of hitting the right tune with Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithms.
These animal-named processes, despite their fierce online demotion
capabilities, can be tamed through quality content and knowledge-rich pages
that are beneficial to the growing online audience.
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======================================================by:vickytechi===========
