The team here, at Internet Marketing Team, knows how important it is for our clients to rank well on Google Search results. If your site has been suffering with Google search engine rankings lately, you may be in luck. Google’s Gary Illyes recently announced that Google would be manually updating Panda again soon, sometime in June.
What’s Included in the New Panda Update?
Unlike updates in the past, the new Panda update will not be a major overhaul by any means. Google is not necessarily changing the algorithm update. Instead, they are refreshing the underlining data of the algorithm to improve the accuracy and relevance of the results.
While Google is optimistic that Penguin will soon be running in real time, without the need for manually updates, unfortunately, Panda will likely always need these manual updates to keep Google’s databases full of the most current information.
How Will This Update Affect Webpages?
No one knows for sure exactly how the new Panda update will affect websites, and we won’t know until the update goes into effect. Google’s John Mueller has said that the Google is working on making both Penguin and Panda faster, but was unable or unwilling to really dive into the details of what that meant.
The truth is, some websites should see an improvement in their performance in Google while others may see a decline. As a whole, websites should not expect a major shift. Panda will still run the same algorithm, only with new information.
How Can Website Owners Prepare for the Next Panda Update
The good news is that website owners who are up-to-date on the latest Google information and strategies will not need to spend a large amount of time preparing for this change. The same strategies that worked when Panda was first released should be the same ones that work well with Panda today.
Still, if you never optimized your site in the first place or if your site still needs some extra tweaking to achieve best results, here are the tips you will want to try.
Improve the Quality of Your Content
• Get rid of duplicate content on your sites. Duplicate content is especially common with sales pages. Use the rel=canonical tag, type up new content, or take duplicate pages out of the index altogether.
• Stop keyword stuffing. While keywords are still an important part of SEO, they aren’t the only part, and stuffing too many into a short article will only flag your article as spam in Google.
• Stop scraping and/or spinning articles. As Google’s algorithms grow in complexity, scraping and spinning articles will hurt, not help, you. Write your own quality content or hire a copywriter to do it for you.
Improve User Experience
• Improve your navigation. Help your readers can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Make sure the bots can find their way around too.
• Reduce the number of ads on your pages. If your site is covered in ads, take some of them down. Content should always be your main focus.
Improve the Quality of Your Backlinks
• Get rid of spammy backlinks. If you’ve purchased backlinks in the past and have yet to take care of them, go through and get rid of them now. Delete as many as you can, contact other site owners to have them removed, and use Google’s disavow tool as needed.
• Obtain links from relevant and high-quality sites. You can do this by creating excellent content, especially ultimate guides or infographics, which others will naturally want to link to. You can submit guest posts as well.
In today’s world of stiff competition, you can’t afford to simply do the bare minimum with your site. Fail to optimize, and you’ll only be giving your competition the upper hand.
The latest Google Panda update may not be a big one, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore it. Use these tips to make sure your site is ready, and be sure to continue looking to our site for all the latest SEO information you need to know.