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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Click the arrow to open the jargon you are interested in learning more about. I will continue to add to the Jargon so be sure to check back!

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Optimised landing pages are a core part of a Pay Per Click campaign. With Google paying even closer attention not only to the quality of your landing page but also the speed at which it loads a lot is riding on the quality of your landing pages. The quality of your landing page is one of the factors Google uses to decide how much you are going to pay for a click on your ad.

If your page load time is too slow you pay more for your AdWords clicks, poor layout and use of elements like H tags, alt image tags and of course the copy used on your landing pages will also affect the cost you pay. Google needs to ensure the landing page your ad leads to gives its users search query the most relevant information possible, the less relevant the landing page the more you pay.

Of course there are many others factors in play when an Internet user types a search query which matches one of the keywords in your ad groups. The quality score of your ad and keywords are but a few others to mention. The end result is how much you pay for your clicks, the lower the cost the further your budget will stretch.

OK, so onto Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. Working with clients it seems many business owners consider SEO as a waste of money, a dark art where they pay someone for something they aren’t too sure about and can’t see a direct benefit to their business. I have worked with clients who started down the route of combined PPC and SEO campaign only to drop the SEO after a 6 months as they saw no value of the work being done.

Whats the difference between PPC and SEO?

So we are clear, PPC or Pay Per Click like it says in the title, you pay for each click your ad receives.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is getting your website listed high on Google’s organic search results, also know as Search Engine Results Page (SERP). I would describe the Organic search results as free but if you are paying to have SEO work done to your website it isn’t really.

SEO is a careful balance of linking other authoritative and most importantly relevant website content to your web page. The link building is known as ‘off page optimisation’, ‘on page optimsation’ is covered in part by the list below. A careful balance of keywords, placement and how they are used within the page content.

The landing page on your website needs to contain your most important keywords in the following parts of the page:

• URL
• Title
• H tags
• Good copy
• alt image tags
• META description

The above list is not exhaustive, there are lots of other important elements which affect your page rank in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) placement.

So, you are asking yourself what is the connection between PPC and SEO then?

In my opinion they both interact with each other, this interaction is however only a one way street. The SEO efforts to a landing page on your website will have a positive effect on your PPC campaigns. Having a great AdWords account with wonderfully written ad copy and a mix if strong short and long tail keywords isn’t going to help your website rise through the organic search results page and get you on page 1.

On the plus side, your SEO efforts if done properly should see your CPC (Cost Per Click) costs reduced for your campaigns using landing pages that have had SEO work done to them.

Going back to clients that dropped the SEO and kept going with their PPC campaigns. We gradually started to see CPC costs rise. Why you ask? Relevance.

The relevancy of your landing page is what Google is interested in. The more relevant the page content is, the more likely the same Internet users will return next time they are looking for something online.

Another factor affecting SEO is the age of the content, Google is also looking for fresh content that is being updated regularly. The thinking behind this is that if a page has been updated it is likely that the content is more relevant thant an older page with similar content.

After all, Google’s business is search.

If you have applied the SEO correctly you should see an improvement in your organic results. SEO is a slow business and the results can take 6 months for your site to be seen on page 1 of search results for your keyword. Amongst other things the results of the SEO work depends on the number of other pages optimised for the same keywords your webpage on the Internet.

The quality score of your landing page for AdWords should also improve. If you have optimised your landing page for the same words you have in your AdWords campaigns your landing page is now more relevant to the search query in your ad group activating your ad. The result of the better quality landing page, a dozen tightly themed keywords with a couple of nice ads should result in a lower CPC.

Google rewards you for a tightly themed campaign, with relevant ad groups containing both long and short tail keywords and some engaging ad copy with call to action. When Google calculates how much it will cost and whose ad gets the top spot in the results for a users search query your landing page should tip the scales and get you a cheaper CPC bid.

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