We have written a little bit of a comedy headline for what can be a VERY serious issue for some business owners and any managers responsible for profit and loss.
Google’s search ranking algorithm update code named ‘Panda‘, dubbed the ‘Farmer update‘ by the search industry, was released earlier this year. This is one animal you do not want to mess with!
Aggressively removing low quality web pages from search
Google’s Panda is designed to aggressively remove low quality web pages from search results by applying a site wide penalty to websites with high ratios of:
- Low quality content
- Thin and shallow content
- Duplicate or copied content
- High advert to copy ratio
The update takes into account a lot of quality factors from bounce rates to the number of returning visitors and adjusts your rankings accordingly. Many people have said this is less of an algorithm tweak and more of a new way to measure and punish low quality sites.
Anger Google’s Panda and you can lose high percentages of traffic and, by extension, profit.
How to avoid being bitten by Google’s Panda
A large variety of sites can be affected, but if you follow some simple rules you can avoid being bitten by this not so cute, furry animal:
- Always write your own content for ALL pages (yes that means you too e-commerce sites, even product pages)
- Write your content in a manner that is deep and meaningful, making it as interesting as possible
- Try to keep your banner advertising minimal (especially if its irrelevant adverts to the content)
- Put your strongest content up-front on a page
You really shouldn’t be using duplicate content or cramming ads into your website. This is a no-brainer to Optix, you should have a description which contains a clear reason to buy, a call to action and a hook to grab your reader’s attention.
Put yourself in your client’s shoes, why should they buy from you rather than another re-seller with the same description and pictures? Can you add value? Can you convince them to buy?
Your page is your sales person, some sales people are good, some people are bad, make yours a good sales person solving the user’s problems by selling them a product.
Good luck, and as always, feel free to comment, contact us or share this page, you never know you might save someone’s business.
