Archive for April, 2012

Surviving Panda partII

Friday, April 13th, 2012
Post Panda
Your site may be suffering from a Panda penalty incase the following applied to the webpages:
  • The website has too many inbound links with exact target keyword match anchor text
  • The website has engaged in acquiring too many low quality external links with exact keyword match anchor text.
  • The website has the content useless for anyone The design of the website is impairing user experience
  • The webmaster is monetizing website by stuffing excessive adverts at the top of the page
  • The website is filled with pirated content, rip off articles written in horrible language
  • The website has duplicate content issues either through multiple duplicate posts, tags and archives
  • The website has too little natural links from authoritative websites
If yes then how do you go about fixing this?
  • First and foremost work on the content. Make sure you provide information and not just stuff the page with unnaturally fitting keywords.Start updating your website with fresh and reliable content on a regular basis. At the same time rework on pages that have low quality or poor information.
  • Since there is now less emphasis on the value of incoming links (as per the Google algo update), work on a better link profile.” “Try to be as original as you could and place emphasis on production of quality content and links will start coming naturally. Try to vary your anchor text for internal links with naked url and branded url that are perceived natural by the  Google Engine. If possible try to modify the anchor text of your existing links with with naked url address and your brand name. Back out of any link exchange programs and refrain from giving outbound do follow links to other websites. Only allow a summary of your content in RSS feed and don’t be fast in building new links. Don’t link incoming search terms to your blog content but rather just display them as ordinary text under the article content to prove relevance in the eyes of search engine.“
  • Google bots may treat a link towards the top of the page with more value when compared to a link towards the end of the page so article links and guest posting may loose some of their value but not entire.So build new natural links and lower down the number of targeted incoming links.
  • Start a fresh link building campaign, try to acquire as many junk links, naked links, branded links as possible.  Try to create internal links but anchor text should never match the exact targeted keyword. However the old work does not go in vain. Your old links still carry value if you reduce the proportion of keyword targeted anchor text links. The easiest way is to build as many naked and junk links towards the internal pages of your website as possible. These would be:
  • Junk Links - Junk links had virtually no importance in the eyes of Google. These are links that contain general anchor text keywords such as “Click Here”, “Visit the Website”, “I found this website useful” etc. However it seems that Google treats junk links as high authority natural links towards a website.
  • Naked Links -Naked links are search engine friendly links treated well by Google. Usually a naked link has the same anchor text “http://www.mydomian.com/my=page.html”.
  • Brand Links -Brand links contain your brand name in the anchor text.These again would carry value as they are natural links.
  • Latent Semantic Links (LSI Links) - Latent Semantic Links comprise of anchor text synonymous to your targeted keywords. For example if you are targeting “Business Opportunities” than the anchor text you should try to avail is “Viable market for starting a business”, “Business opportunity for young entrepreneurs”, “Business Tips for entrepreneurs”.
  • In addition by adding no follow attribute sections, categories, archives, tags and other areas where low quality content exists will reduce the access to the low quality paages already existing on the site.
  • Be active on social media sites as that is a good indicator that your site provides good information. Contributing to reputed blogs like Businessinsider, Tech Crunch gives valuable backlinks.Getting more likes and shares on Google +, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest gives the signal that the content is useful. Build a personal author profile on Google + and link it with your website so that Google displays author oriented search results. Add an official Google + fan page and a Google + widget so that users can follow your page.

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Recovering from Panda Part1

Monday, April 9th, 2012
Recovering from Google Panda
Was your site hit by hit by Panda 3.3?
Panda 3.3 is the latest Google’s Panda algorithm rolled out in February. It specifically targeted unnatural link profiles. It’s not a ranking penalty. It is a loss of ranking due to a decreased value of the inbound links pointing to your site. The inbound links were devalued due to a change in the way Google assesses inbound links. Here’s Google’s statement on what changed:
“Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.”
So what are some of the metrics we can work on so as to regain lost glory:
1.Prevent a  back-button click to Google
The Panda update is about giving the user what they want. Your goal now is to stop the user from a G-bounce back to Google. Understand your user coming from Google. It is far, far better to send them someplace else to get what they need then letting them go back to Google.  A return back to Google to select another result tells Google the searcher’s question wasn’t answered!
2. Avoid the block button to be clicked.
This gives Google signals that the site is delivering irrelevant information. It is a clear, explicit signal to Google that a user was dissatisfied with a search result. Most likely this was a signal that was integrated into Panda 2.
3. Improve your link profile
Shift weightage from just keyword in the anchor text. If too many of your inbound links had “exact match” anchor text, meaning that the anchor text of the links was exactly the keywords you were trying to rank for then this could fit the panda pattern. The value of these links was reduced because of the number of exact match links – so change the exact match anchor text to a varied anchor text.
This also opens up the doors to “Negative SEO” or attack-tactics. It makes it possible to “up” your competitors by building links to their websites with over-optimized exact match anchor text.Check your backlink profile and see if there is an overuse of links linking to your site.
Your link profile should also include your brand name in the anchor text. Providing an anchor text  with your brand name or a variation of the brand name gives Google the cue that the link portfolio has a r variations of it are one signal to Google of a natural link profile.
LSI anchor text are related terms to your target keywords. Google looks for these anchors in backlink profiles as a signal of a natural link profile.
Checklist to avoid the above:
Work on the kind of answers the searcher would want when he enters a keyword in the search box
Make sure they get the answers when they reach the clicked page.
Make the information avaiable above the fold with a clean page layout.
Keep different pages for different keywords.
Do’nt over advertise especially above the fold.
Keep the your site up and responsive.  When your site is down on, your G-bounce rate is 100%.
The link profile should include anchor text with lots of variation, brand-name anchors, LSIs, junk anchors, and naked URL anchors. When you bring the number of exact-match anchors and varied anchors to the same level you will regain some of the value of your links.
Add links from social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Delicious etc

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