What is
PANDA
Panda is now using human reviewers to rate some
sites, especially where a pattern of manipulation is evident. So, websites
optimised for bots are now being punished.
Panda intends to improve the quality of search results
by removing low quality, entries from the early pages. Content mills and sites
with useless information that had been artificially pushed to the top results
pages are now being hit pretty hard.
If your site has been affected here are some tips
to help. Removing low quality content will help you deal with Panda but here
are some steps that are especially useful.
Duplicate
Anchor Text and Links from Article Directories/Low Quality Sites
Backlinks are very important but as you know it is quality backlinks that matter.
Panda now penalises sites with numerous backlinks from article directories or
other content sites because these sites are deemed low quality. Additionally,
when the anchor text of your backlinks is always the same this now triggers
suspicions that this link hasn't been created naturally. You now have to use
multiple variations of your keywords
No Multiple
Pages with the Same Keyword
The reason why content mills were slapped the
hardest by Panda is that they had many pages with the same keyword.
If your site has multiple pages that target the
same keyword, get rid of them because this is hurting you.
Too Many
Outbound Links with Keywords
Too many outbound links are bad but when they are
with keywords as anchor text, this is even worse. The assumption is that these
links are the result of a link exchange – i.e. they aren't natural.
Additionally limit keyword stuffed anchors as much as you can.
Low content 1-2
Paragraphs pages
The rules have changed and pages with 1-2
paragraphs of text can damage your rankings. Add more text or remove the pages
– these are the two options you have.
Panda Likes
New Content
News and recent updates have always been loved by
search engines but with Panda this is even more important. About 35% of
searches will be affected because preference will be given to current pages. Your
site doesn’t have to be a news machine but if you update your content
frequently this will help.
Duplicate Content
Panda now seems to penalise duplicate content. If
you are using spun articles, this can seriously hurt you. Try to make your
textual content as original as possible. If you have multiple sites use a
content checker tool to analyse the percentage of similarity. A high score
means low rankings, we have noticed this is being penalised by the index page
of sites being removed from the SERP’s
Duplicate
Templates
Duplicate content applies to everything on a page.
If you are using the same template for all your pages, i.e. the same blocks of
text (and links) you reuse on each page. Keep only the most important ones.
Poor
Internal Linking Structure
Panda likes a clean navigation structure - this now
gains even more weight. Check your internal links and streamline your
navigation
Clean Your
Site
You may have some good content pages but too many
sub-standard ones and your whole site can suffer. The only solution here is to
fix or remove the low quality ones and wait for the crawlers to come.
Affiliate
Links and Ads
Numerous outbound links is bad but too many affiliate
links on a page is even worse. You need to cut the number of affiliate links on
a page. Preferably make them nofollow, if possible. The number of ads on a page
also plays role with Panda and the rule is: the fewer, the better.
If you’ve been on the receiving end, clean your
site and make it Panda-compliant.
It’s the only way to recover your positioning
It’s the only way to recover your positioning
