Google Panda 4.0

The Google Panda 4.0 update is all about unique, high quality content and back links. In order to best tackle the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking of your website you need to formulate a content marketing plan. Some questions we need to ask ourselves.

• Why are we creating content?
• Who are we trying to reach?
• What benefit does our target audience receive?
• What benefit do we get from the content?

After reviewing our SERP rankings before and after Panda 4.0 we now need to look at how Panda will affect us in the future.

You need to ensure that your website contains a good mix of unique, helpful and authentic content. Product descriptions can no longer be simply copied and pasted from the manufacturer’s site or brochure. You need to re-write product descriptions and make them unique from other retailers above all they must contain relevant and helpful information.

Adding a variety of good quality images, text, video and animations on the site will improve your visitors experience and SEO ranking. Google is looking for valuable online resources which provide unique, informative and helpful information.

Using a wide variety of media content we can provide better quality pages. Animations and video clips from YouTube will engage visitors for longer . We can use this content to also keep visitors on the website longer. We need to ensure that the content we create is unique, helpful and engaging. The ‘stickier’ the web pages the longer visitors will stay and explore the website.

What is Google Panda?

Google Panda is a filter that prevents low quality sites and/or pages from ranking well in the search engine results page. The filter’s threshold is influence by Google Quality Raters. Quality Raters answer questions such as “would I trust this site with my credit card?” so that Google can distinguish the difference between high and low quality sites.

The Google Panda patent (patent 8,682,892), filed on September 28, 2012 and was granted on March 25, 2014. The patent states that Google Panda creates a ratio with a site’s inbound links and reference queries, search queries for the site’s brand. That ratio is then used to create a site-wide modification factor. The site-wide modification factor is then used to create a modification factor for a page based upon a search query. If the page fails to meet a certain threshold, the modification factor is applied and, therefore, the page would rank lower in the search engine results page.

Google Panda affects the ranking of an entire site or a specific section rather than just the individual pages on a site.

In March 2012, Google updated Panda and stated that they are deploying an “over-optimization penalty,” in order to level the playing field.

Google says it only takes a few pages of poor quality or duplicated content to hold down traffic on an otherwise solid site, and recommends such pages be removed, blocked from being indexed by the search engine, or rewritten. However, Matt Cutts, head of webspam at Google, warns that rewriting duplicate content so that it is original may not be enough to recover from Panda—the rewrites must be of sufficiently high quality, as such content brings “additional value” to the web. Content that is general, non-specific, and not substantially different from what is already out there should not be expected to rank well: “Those other sites are not bringing additional value. While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table.”.

What did the Panda 4.0 update do?

Initially it appears that press release websites seem to have been worst affected by the new Panda 4 update. Other prominent TLD websites have also seen a huge drop in SERP ranking. EBay has suffered badly from the Panda 4 update losing its ranking as one of the top 10 websites online.

Panda 4.0 losers

An SEO search on the main TLD sites has found a variety of high ranking sites affected by the update. EBay has seen ⅓ of its pages dropped from search engine results. The Yellow Advertiser website has also seen 20% of its pages dropped from search results. The table below gives an insight into the top list of losers from the Panda 4 update. It has been reported by eBay that they lost their ranking due to manual changes to their site which happened at the same time Panda 4 was released?

The Panda 4 winners

Although we have seen giants topple from their top SEO positions we have also seen others benefit.

What do you need to do?

The following points are an indication of what to do to appease the great Google Panda 4.0. The list is compiled from the Google Webmaster blog which lists a large number of things they look at when assessing quality.

• Are the articles on your site full of good detailed information, or very shallow?
• Do you have duplicate content? This could mean that content is duplicated on multiple pages or that you have content that is duplicated on other sites across the web.
• Do you have spelling errors?
• Do your articles provide original content that can’t be found elsewhere on the web?
• Would people want to bookmark and share your content?
• Are there a distracting number of ads on your pages?

A close eye needs to be kept on the great Google Panda, updates to Panda means new tweaks to our website content to keep ahead. Ecommerce managers and business owners alike need to understand the importance on relevant, fresh and unique content to the Panda!

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The video presentation from Neil Perkins was great!

Neil started with an interactive short history of how long some of the tech we use every day and take for granted. I had pen and pad at the ready on noted some of the historic moments in our tech history.

1. 1971 – 1st email was sent using ARPANET, the predecessor of what we know today as the Internet.
2. 1978 – 1st email spam was sent
3. 1990 – 1st website created
4. 1993 – 1st search engine created – W3C, then Yahoo in 1995
5. 1994 – 1st eCommerce site
6. 1994 – 1st banner ad created
7. 1995 – 1st eBay sale – a broken laser pointer
8. 1998 – Google launched
9. 2002 – 1st social network – Friendster
10. 2006 – Facebook opened to everyone
11. 2010 – Instagram launches in October and now has 100 million users

Just looking at the list as I wrote it down was quite amazing. The advances we have made in such a small amount of time. The hardware technology we now have at our fingertips and the amazing possibilities that can be created.

Neil went on to speak about Moore’s law

GAFA – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon – The ones to watch for emerging as leaders in shaping the digital tomorrow.

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Somewhat relieved that we don’t need our web cam for the Squared Online lessons I waited in anticipation for our 2nd more in-depth lesson.

The lesson involved looking at how we used technology in our daily lives. The intention was to get everyone thinking on how we use tech today and how we might use it tomorrow.

The lesson outcome was to get everyone thinking about how consumers use tech in their daily lives, who had access to their social data and how it was used. We were also asked to think about how everyone behaves differently and how this might affect an individuals digital life.

We watched a short video called Class of 2015, intended to depict a day in the digital life for students in 2015. How tech affected a digital day in the life of a student.

For your viewing pleasure below.

We were also introduced to Kiva and Kickstarter, two websites made possible using technology and innovation to help small businesses to start up or expand.

Another quite scary part of the lesson for me were the statistics on how the public perceive the use of their data and how the majority of us don’t care about it?

The Telegraph reported that three-quarters of the UK public do not care about privacy. In my opinion this is very worrying. I would imagine this is either due to lack of the public’s knowledge about the huge amount of data they create and what the web sites they use are allowed to use it for. More public awareness needs to be made about the privacy policies on social sites like Facebook and what they will be using the collected data for.

We were also asked how emerging technology would affect us in the future. Some stats below:

• 47% of people believe that technology will make life better
• 44% say it is too soon to tell
• 10% say it will make life worse

How do you think emerging technology will affect your life in the future?

• Teleporting to work?
• Time machines?
• Trains that arrive on time?

Part of the lesson resources was to look at the conversation prism, pasted below.

Conversation Prism

Homework

As part of our homework we were all set a day in my digital life, we have to create a slide to depict a day in our digital lives. A PowerPoint presentation link was given for students to add their slide and show how tech was used on a daily basis.

And no I haven’t shot my video yet and yes I am still dreading the video part of this course! Hearing my strong Essex accent makes me cringe! I will do it under duress

Here’s my slide

A Slice of my Digital Life

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Background

I have worked successfully in the digital marketing industry for a number of years now. All of my knowledge and skills have been self taught with no formal training.

I read blogs, articles and use analytics from various sources to try to understand my clients customers and their behaviors.

Since August this year I thought it was time to gain some qualifications to prove my skills and worth to my current and perspective clients.

I manage many large pay per click campaigns so I started with the Google exams in August and qualifies a week later passing my Google Fundamentals and Advanced search certification.

I want to acquire the full set of Google certifications but with my work commitments gaining the Display and Analytics advanced exams before starting Squared Online proved too much .

1st Lesson!

With some nerves and anticipation I prepared for our 1st lesson of the new Squared Online course. Pen and pad at the ready I suddenly realised I hadn’t setup the web cam that was on the hardware list!

Spending the next 15 minutes trying frantically to unpack and get my web cam working, I realised it wasn’t necessary for the classes (to my relief) until we started the lesson.

As Squares were joining the classroom we were all getting acquainted, discussing interests and chatting in general.

We had a brief introduction to our tutors, the interface and how to use the online campus and the resources that would be used as part of our online study.

Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and WordPress seem to be the main platforms used on the course, thankfully I have accounts with all of these platforms so just a quick template change, update the details and I’m set to go!

A Q&A session finished off our 1st Squared Online class.

Overall a good experience.

Homework already!

We have a video to watch from Neil Perkins on changes in technology and behavior and the impact of change on digital. Looking forward to watching Neil’s video and acquiring a different perspective on our digital world and what influences it.

What I’d like to get from Squared Online.

I have always worked on my own, without a team to support me or bounce ideas off and gain new inspiration. Therefore I am looking forward to collaborating with other Squares from the same marketing industry.

With this in mind I am keen to support my fellow Squares and share tips and tricks with them. I would also like to learn as much as I can from Squares with experience in the digital industries I currently have little or no knowledge of.

Concerns?

A main concern of mine with the Squared Online course is having to publicly display my views on the web, something I am not used to doing on a personal level.

I post blogs, tweet and use the social platforms for clients but always masked by a business profile as opposed to a personal one.

Thanks for reading!

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Smart phone technology is evolving at a huge rate leaving the marketing industry still trying to work out how they can best target their clients customers. As this new digital ecosystem evolves who will be the market leader of smart phone manufacturers?

We have already seen a huge change from the initial mobile phone technology to the new smart phones.

Incredibly the mobile phone has been with us since 1983!

In 2001 the Kyocera 6035 was released but it wasn’t really until Nokia released the 7650 camera phone in 2002 that the smart phone started to evolve.

Apple started to take the smart phone sales away from Nokia in July 2007 with the first generation iPhone. Apple maintained the lion share of smart phone saturation until the Internet giant Google released their smart phone operating system Android Cupcake in 2009 as open source for manufacturers to use.

Why you ask would Google give away their operating system?

Simples! Giving away their operating system allowed it to be used on many manufacturers hardware. The manufacturers didn’t need to spend as much developing an operating system, with that strategy Android currently holds the market share of the smart phone market.

Recently we have seen Microsoft buyout Nokia making it now a serious smart phone manufacturer. Nokia sales have been slipping but with the infusion of Microsoft cash , R&D and marketing they are looking to take back some of the smart phone market from Apple and Google.

Smartphone Revolution

We have seen how fast smart phones can become established and then lose their market share. The recent recruitment of Hugo Barra, Googles ex head of engineering for Google by Xiaomi could spell trouble for the big manufacturers. Xiaomi is an emerging smart phone manufacturer from China, they have taken the smartphone industry by storm reporting record growth. It appears they are keen to expand their market share in global smart phone sales.

Could Xiaomi be a credible contester for one of the top 3 smart phone manufacturer slots?

OK, there is a lot going on in the smart phone marketplace, but now we also hear rumors from the Amazon camp that they might be releasing a FREE smartphone! Now FREE is always hard to compete with so we will have to see if there is more news next weeks from them.

Read more on the Amazon smartphone news here: The Register

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After working in pay per click advertising for the last 6 years I have taken it for granted that clients don’t ask for my qualifications. I can only assume that this has been due to their lack of knowledge. The more savvy clients now want to see all your degrees, trophies and medals!

Now I have met a lot of professionals from the industry over the past few years and I would say almost every single person I have come across has a degree.

I don’t.

I have worked with a small set of clients for the last 6 years. I have helped grow their small businesses into a multi million pound national companies spending huge amounts on their pay per click. Until recently joining LinkedIn I had never been asked about my qualifications for what I do?

I began to question if I was missing a huge marketing channel or revenue stream for my clients due to my lack of knowledge or gaps in my knowledge.

In order to ensure that clients can not only rely on my word that I can do the work for them, I have took a vow at the start of August to get all the pieces of paper needed to appease perspective clients.

Since August I have passed the Google AdWords Fundamentals and Advanced Search exams. I have started the Google Advanced Display exam and the Bing certified professional programs and plan to pass these two before the end of September. If I am honest, I started both the training programs for the AdWords exams, got bored and just took the exams, 90% on the first an 84% on the second one.

I should also mention that I start the all new super duper Squared Online course tomorrow!

I am little apprehensive about starting the Squared course, I appear to be 20 years older than most of the other students on the course (and some tutors) and no doubt they all have degrees!

I already made a massive mistake by answering questions before watching the video, not a great start

I will be posting regularly about my time becoming a Square and hopefully put an old geezer’s perspective on a new learning qualification.

My Education and experience so far!

I have to be honest now, I have no fancy degree, I left school as fast as I could before taking my exams. I was set to take 9 ‘O’ levels and a CSE in Social Science, I just couldn’t wait to get out there, get a job and earn some money.

My working life has seen me doing all kinds of work. I did steelwork fabrication & erection for a few years working for my uncle. I then worked as a telephone engineer for a year and then ended up working for a national retailer, Magnet & Southerns (Magnet now). After a few years of working my way up the management ladder I was head hunted out by Howdens Joinery to help them start their new business. I helped grow the business before leaving to pursue my realised passion.

I had always excelled with computers, at school writing a burglar alarm program on the schools BBC computer, the sensors for the alarm being my technology project. Fixing, learning, anything to do with computers I have been told I have a natural talent when it comes to IT.

I started work at CAPITA and less than a year later started working as an IT contractor for a London Borough. I began work there full time as assistant IT manager, again after a year I made it to IT manager. Responsible for teh support and delivery of IT to 2,500 students and staff across several sites.

I learn anything IT related very quickly and seem to have a second sense when it comes to problem solving. My expertise and insight into emerging technologies helped to create a state of the art learning environment with provision for interactive whiteboards before they were readily accepted as a teaching aid.

We also changed the face of the learning environment with a revolutionary interactive desktop design, this helped to bring schools and students closer to a Virtual Learning Environment when there were none available on the market.

I finally left after 9 years when PFI contracts came as part of the BSF (Building Schools for the Future) program.

Digital Marketing

Since leaving local government I have worked on pay per click advertising. My IT skills are also called upon when trying to find technological solutions to the clients everyday problems. As the clients companies have grown I have worked in a much wider capacity. Some of the roles I carry out for them include:

• Brochure design working with developers, pagination, layout, reporting
• Paper advertising design, pagination, layout, reporting
• Email marketing design working with developers, pagination, layout, reporting
• eBay, store design working with developers, business strategy and continued growth
• Social network presence and marketing
• Brand awareness
• CRM system design and implementation
• Analytics and strategy
• IT strategy
• Project management
• eCommerce design and implementation working with developers

The above list is far from exhaustive, for every campaign we send I spend hours looking at internal and external data from Google analytics, client phone system call logs, client CRM system reports and any other source of information relevant to the product, market and client to help the next campaign even better. My work with clients is commission based so my pay reflects their earnings and company growth.

I am passionate about tech, emerging tech and anything electricity flows through. Sad as I am I get a kick out of getting more sales for less money, higher click throughs, more likes, retweets, I love proving that we can and must improve our marketing to keep ahead of the competition.

I am hoping to learn a lot and hopefully reinforce all I have taught myself the past 6 years on the Squared Online course.

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