How to Pet & Be Friends with Google Panda

Before Google named its algorithm update (or “data refresh” however you’d like to call it) Panda, it was a cute animal. Today the webmaster community looks at the animal with indifference, for it has caused several disasters with that cute looking face. (It’s another story as to whether Google chose the name Panda for the animal or one of its Engineers.)

Anyways, the point is that the Panda data refreshes and updates are actually a good thing. Definitely nothing to be scared of. No really. We’ve been hearing several stories of people convincing us that once the Panda hits, you’re doomed. Well, that’s clearly over-reacting. The reality is that, Panda updates are sort of a reality check for webmasters. Do a little it of spring cleaning, ironing out and you’ll be as good as new. I would like to focus on that part than the “scary” part.

Google Panda is a reality check, not a death blow.

At least, that’s what I’d like to believe. If you look at most of the Panda affected websites, you’ll see that there has been partial penalization. That is, most often, only parts of the website are “blacked out” and organic traffic affected. (Unless of course, you’ve been doing some hard core black hat stuff.)

If you see this as an opportunity, all I’m seeing is room for improvement.

Many a times, Panda recovery is simple (not easy). If you can figure out the reasons why your website got hit, the job is half done. Obviously, you got hit by the Panda, but it could be several of the following reasons.

- Over optimization.
- Low quality articles.
- Bad UI.
- Bad user engagement.
- Zero value content.

Although these are pretty high level metrics, for every Panda hit website, there are specific action items to recover. For instance, one metric that I’ll look for in finding low quality articles, are pages with high search engine traffic but super short visit time. I’d use this metric to figure out why people are bouncing off the site in such short times and do the necessary required on the content to make it even more engaging. Most of the times, many of these measures point to a common factor – overall quality of the articles.

But again, quality is a relative term. And in SEO, your quality is only as good as the guy above you in SERPs. Once the website above you has better content, you’ll be pushed to lower ranks, so its important to make sure that you always stay updated and better in content when compared to competition.

Specific Metrics that can help you find Google Panda affluent content

1. Dangerously low average visit time.
Pages with super low average visit times are a clear indication that those pages are low quality and people do not see any value in them, which is why they’re bouncing off really fast. A good way to fix them would be find out what terms these pages are getting inbound traffic from and validating their content against these terms. It might also help to check what the other results on SEPRs are, so you can add more value to your content.

2. Duplicate meta content.
Many a times, duplicate content is overlooked. Webmaster’s tool does a good of reporting duplicate meta information and lets you download the files in CSV format. Duplicate content is small numbers on a website are okay, but having them in large numbers can mean poor site engineering and might raise flags with search engines if left unattended. Keep a constant tab on duplicate content and fix them whenever they arise.

3. Content HTML – Template Code ratio.
Many pages score low on the quality scale because they are poorly optimized or the design/template of the website makes it appear so. Over optimization can bring down the value of content as well. Keeping the content – template/design html to a minimal number is a good idea.

4. Ad – Content HTML ratio.
Some pages can show up as low quality because they have lots of ads in there, so much that they overpower the actual content on the site. Look for Code to Text content ratio checker tools like these.

6. Negative or stagnant SEPRs positions.
A good way to find invaluable pages in your site is to look for pages that have consistently been stagnant of dropping in search positions over large periods of time. Clearly, these pages are dragging down the quality of your website, if appearing in large volumes. Make sure such pages are either fixed or removed as soon as possible.

So, essentially Panda is a great way to QA your website. Many of the times,we’ve found that if you do the “identification & fixing” part right, you can easily bounce off from a Panda penalty. Its simple, though not easy. But Panda’s not death blows, try to see them as opportunities to improve, and you’ll all set in the right path soon.