Google Panda, Freshness & More – SMX Israel 2012 Summary
Moderator: Barry Schwartz, RustyBrick
Speakers: Eli Feldblum (RankAbove), Dixon Jones (Majestic SEO), Gil Reich (Managing Greatness) and Aviv Manoach (Universal McCann Search).
The session started with a quick review of past important Google updates by Barry Schwartz. The list included Fritz and Florida updates from 2003, Austin update of 2004, Big Daddy / Jagger updates of 2005 and others.
This really nice review stretched the line regarding Google striving to make it’s algorithm better and better each year /month.
Those who wish to read more about each Google update may check this really great summary by seomoz: Google Algorithm Change History
Eli Feldblum about Panda Update
The panda update is all about page quality. It affects low quality sites / pages and yet –
Not any change in your site / traffic to your site is panda’s fault.
How does panda work?
Human quality testers check the site design, trustworthiness, speed, content and so on.
In one sentence –
Every page needs a reason to get indexed.
-> Do not create pages based on keywords you don’t have content for.
-> Don’t repackage or spin content
-> Don’t use similar text on different pages with only slight variation.
So what one can do?
Fighting back!
-> Make your pages more high quality.
Of course you can take the easy solution and get yourself a new domain or subdomain, but this is nothing but a temporary fix of the situation.
The real way to fight Panda is to identify low quality pages and make them better.
How to improve a page?
Better design (a clean design with no ads)
Unique fresh relevant content
Change of URL (avoid words like tag in the URL path)
Keep it fresh – content + internal links
Treat Google well – no duplications + user friendly sites.
Dixon Jones about analyzing algo changes like Panda
How to methodically analyze algo changes like Panda?
Be prepared
If you don’t have info about what happened in the past you can’t analyze the current changes.
You should also check others rankings and not only yours (your competitors but also other sites from different industries).
Don’t panic
Here Dixon showed us a picture of his daughter but unfortunately I didn’t get it on my camera…
Check your facts
The Majesticseo guys created a list of winners and losers (in terms of Panda update).
Set up a control group
Listen to rumors only anecdotal
Who won and why?
Not everything said was right
One conclusion:
Pages that have poor deep link quality are the losers whether or not this was an algo factor.
The problem is that the Majesticseo people didn’t know whether those pages were raking for the relevant terms before the Panda update (on the next update they’ll know better).
Set up hypotheses
The Majesticseo people decided to go for the 23 Qs one that got hit by Panda update should ask himself
Gil Reich about Panda Update
Google may make additional changes but the important thing is that its direction is quite clear.
-> One should think in long term strategy.
The Panda update is a non separated part of the general change made by Google, including the personalization of search results and favoring social related results (=better spam controlled results comparing to textual links).
The one to integrate it all (mobile search, social results etc) will be the winner.
Panda top issues deal with the problem of thin content as well as spamy content – if before Panda Google would only ban your spamy pages, now it’s punishing your entire site.
-> Don’t rank where you can’t deliver
-> If you don’t have the relevant content on your site, link out to sites that have it (instead of forcing the user to return to Google, a thing that is not too good in terms of SEO and user friendliness, as Google counts this kind of users’ behavior).
Aviv Manoach on Google Panda
NEW IS ALWAYS BETTER
Thanks to Google and its updates, including the Panda update, we live in a world of fresh results.
– Fresh results require fresh strategy.
– Users want most relevant recent info.
What should we do then?
Onsite – Add new pages, update existing content.
Offsite – Create new links, Change links pages.
Remember!
Too many new pages / links = suspicious.
“Push strategy”
Build – updates around an event schedule (holiday sales etc)
Push – Updates for breaking events
“Pull strategy”
Create – long term updating profile.
Plan – different tactics for different events.
Start today – hit refresh!
Also see: