Google originally unleashed their pet Panda 12 months ago on 24th February 2011 and it has caused a whole range of carnage since then, with around 10 iterations in the past year alone.
In a way it has been a blessing in disguise, well maybe ‘blessing’ is a bit too much of a strong word, but it has certainly made webmasters wake up about what type of content needs to be on a website these days to rank well.
This post is going to be quite an epic, but if you are only interested in certain bits then here is what is going to be covered;
When Google crawls the web, it basically scrapes every single website it can find and stores that in a massive index. When each page is crawled it is run through a sophisticated algorithm that contains over 200 ranking signals which determines where the page should rank within the search results for a specific query.
Well the Panda algorithm sits on top of this normal ranking algorithm and is designed to filter the wheat from the chaff so to speak. It’s aim is to punish low quality websites and promote websites with high quality unique content.
In the past a lot of poor quality websites used to scrape content from other websites and rank higher than them. Whilst this still happens on occasions, the Panda algorithm is aiming at promoting the original sources of information. When a website has been penalised by the update it is often referred to as Pandalised.
Some sources claim that the Panda algorithm is a machine learning algorithm which can detect the differences between high quality websites and low quality websites, although I am not so sure it works like that. In the past Google has been strictly against machine learning and instead using static algorithms developed from tests run internally. Whether it is a machine learning algorithm or not doesn’t really matter though.
Is Panda really ‘better for the user’ ? Well according to someindependent research, yes.
“The results show that Google and Microsoft have won a major victory in the fight against such content farms.
To test how successful Google and Microsoft’s Bing have been at fending off content-farmed results, McCreadie ran 50 search queries known to be a target of content farmers, such as “how to train for a marathon”, in March and August this year. Then he paid people to examine the results for links to low-quality sites, where “low quality” was defined as uninformative sites whose primary function appears to be displaying adverts.
The results are striking. In the case of the marathon query, sites that contained lists of generic tips, such as “invest in a good pair of running shoes”, were present in the top 10 in March but had disappeared by August, while high-quality sources, such as Runner’s World magazine, now appear near the top. Similar trends were found throughout the 50 queries.“
What is it called the Panda update?
Because that is the Google engineers surname who developed the Panda algorithm. There are actually three people within Google who have the surname of Panda but the particular person who developed the algorithm was Navneet Panda.
Information from Google about the Panda update
Google have been kind enough to provide some reasonable information to webmasters about Panda and generally their ranking algorithms. One of the quotes from a Google webmaster central blog post was about how….
“Low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings“
Quite telling really, if you have got a lot of crap on your website then best wake up and smell the coffee. Google (and users!) are looking for high quality information to rank well in the search results. If you have a lot of poor quality content on your site then best take another serious look at it and decide if you are going to (a) improve it or (b) bin itcompletely.
Another interesting quote from the same Google blog post…
“The “Panda” algorithm change has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites“
Or if you want to read that the other way, the Panda algorithm change has decreased ranking for a large number of low-quality websites. Panda is all about getting rid of crap from the search results, crap being websites who scrape content from others and websites who have lots of very low quality content about ‘how to tie your shoe laces’ (unless it is a very good website about that as we will see later in the post).
Google also offered 23 questions to help webmasters evaluate their websites in the same light as how Google tries to do so. The questions below aren’t specific things you can do but instead are more looking at the holistic approach of your website / online business. Have a good think about this information and answer honestly. Then do the same for the people now ranking at number 1 (i.e. your competitors) and ask yourself if you really deserve to rank higher than them?
Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
How much quality control is done on content?
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
Wired also interviewed Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts regarding the Panda update which talks about how Google is trying to filter the low quality websites from the high quality websites.
How to know if you have been Pandalised
Quite simply really, keep a close eye on your rankings and organic traffic in Google Analytics. If you have been hit by Panda then you would expect to see a large steep drop in both rankings and traffic on one of the key Panda release dates listed further down in the post.
Below is an image of what you would see for a Pandalised site
Or if you see that you suddenly had a massive drop in traffic or rankings then suddenly recovered as shown in the image below, then you could deduce that you have managed to recover from panda. This may not always be the case as you may have accidentally noindexedyour entire site, but we will assume you haven’t done that!
One thing to be aware of is that due to Panda being an iterative update, then any drops or subsequent recoveries will only happen on the date of an update. Not every update will likely be announced by Google, but most have been so far. So be wary of anyone who claims to have recovered from Panda not on one of the official Panda updates.
In addition, when a website is Pandalised or recovered then it would only be shown as a steep change in traffic/rankings. Any website which has slowly began to increase rankings and traffic will likely have nothing to do with Panda but more just generally improving their traffic / rankings based on the normal algorithm.
How the Panda algorithm works
Unlike the normal Google algorithm which is updated each time Google crawls your page, the Panda algorithm runs in iterative updates when the ‘data is refreshed’. Previously it wasn’t clear exactly how the algorithm worked, but it was recently clarified in a statement from Google;
“We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users.”
Within the blog post mentioned above Barry Schwartz mentions;
“It was a minor update, with no new ranking signals, but rather just a data refresh of the Panda update.”
So what does it matter how the Panda algorithm runs? Well it matters because for a website to recover from Panda it has to wait until the next update or data refresh. This can be a little annoying since the panda updates can be up to two months apart so and changes you make between now and the next update you will not know exactly what has made your site recover since you will have made lots of changes over that period.
Panda Timeline
Search Engine Round Table and Search Engine Land have been doing a fantastic job keeping up to date with the Panda iterations so feel free to have a look at their sources of information in their blog posts.
Below is a useful timeline which will be updated as further iterations are announced. There is no official numbering system with the updates and various sources contradict the numbering system, so best to focus on the key dates.
The information below showcasing top winners and worst losers from Panda has been compiled from various sources, one of which is the dataSearchmetrics released.
I am not going to comment on the winners and losers as it is clear just looking at the domain names why certain websites have benefited and why others have lost out, common sense can spot that straight away. But feel free to do some further analysis into these different websites to see if you come to the same conclusions as me, one group has fantastic content, the other doesn’t.
Factors that could be used by Panda
Well this section could span the whole of the Google’s 200 ranking algorithm signals although this would turn into a longer post than it already is, so here is some of the summary information instead. Below is a list of possible factors which could be causing a Panda penalty, note that there is no one simple fix, there is no silver bullet to a Panda recovery. The road to recovery is painful, long and slow but this post is designed to point you in the right direction with a clear Panda recovery action plan.
The factors listed below are ones that I have spotted lots of different people mention from various sources and I don’t necessarily agree with them all, but they are listed below for reference;
Promoting brands higher
Penalising keyword rich domain
Over optimisation of keywords on a page
Low quality / quantity back links
Low quality content
Low quality content on part of your site
Poor user metrics (e.g. high bounce rate, low time spent on page)
Site technical issues
Websites which use templates
Etc
Etc
Etc
This is by no means an extensive list, to be honest it is a bit of a lame list but the reason behind that is that you will find someone, somewhere, saying anything is a factor in the Panda algorithm and honestly, no-one really knows what the ‘one-silver-bullet-factor’ actually is.
How to recover from Google Panda
This section is going to be quite long so it is going to be broken down into key areas about how to recover from Google Panda.
There are lots of stories around the web and particularly on Webmaster World about people who have recovered from the update if you are interested in having a good read. Unfortunately there is no real datawhich can be analysed about what has happened from people who have recovered, which is why I can take on board what they are saying but with no hard evidence it is very difficult to take it as solid fact.
That said, what is common ground from people who have recovered is that they don’t really know specifically what they have done to recover. With Panda being an iterative update there were lots of changes made by each of the different people who recovered which mayhave helped them recover. All of these different items have been listed earlier in the post showing ‘factors that could be used by Panda‘.
On the other hand, it could simply be that the sites recovered because the Panda algorithm was tweaked so their site no longer fell into the category of ‘low quality’.
There is no way of knowing for sure if what people did actually made the difference or if it was a simply algorithm change which caused them to recover, but never the less I have listed a Panda recovery action plan which will be useful in helping your site on the road to recovery.
One of the most notable websites which claims to have recovered from the death grip of Panda is Hubpages and they did so by splitting their site between sub-domains for each author opposed to having these as directories. Their traffic originally dropped by around 50% according to the Wall street Journal. According to the article, Matt Cutts responded to an email from Hubpages advising them to try using sub-domains for some of their content.
“HubPages subdomain testing began in late June and already has shown positive results. Edmondson’s own articles on HubPages, which saw a 50% drop in page views after Google’s Panda updates, have returned to pre-Panda levels”
Whilst HubPages claim they have recovered from Panda there is a lot ofskepticism from different people about if they have really recovered from Panda or not.
There has even been different people who have tested a lot of domains for Panda related fixes and concluded that it takes a lot more effort to get out of Panda than the fall into the traps. So best get to work and at a fast pace.
Action plan to recover from Panda
There are a lot of factors that could be causing your website to be deemed as low quality and honestly there is nothing magical about how to recover, just do more great SEO. Instead of trying to trick Google into ranking your site well based on the latest ‘technique’, instead create a fantastic website and instead of trying to emulate the signals that Google deems as quality then the quality signals may just be there for real. Simple!
If you are looking for the magic bullet on how to recover from Panda then I suggest you stop reading now as I am not going to be offering any magic beans here. Just gold old solid SEO advice to grow your website in the long run.
Make sure your site isn’t broke
Sounds obvious, but Google provides a massive list of errors to fix withinGoogle Webmaster Tools so go and get these fixed to begin with. Make your site technically SEO sound. If this doesn’t fix Panda (which is unlikely on its own) then at least you have made your site better in the process.
Fix any 404 errors, 500 errors, 503 errors, redirect loops, broken back links etc. Get everything fixed you can find, but make sure at the same time you are focusing on the main issues behind Panda which is aboutproviding high quality websites for searchers.
Improve user metrics on your site
This should be being done as part of your conversion strategy anyway, but if you aren’t already, then look at ways to improve. There are various tools out there to help with feedback about your website including ClickTale, Kampyle, Kiss Metrics, CrazyEgg and likely many more.
Find out how customers are behaving on your website then find ways to improve. A happier customer is more likely to tell their friends about your website and build those natural links.
Why not set up a free survey with Survey Monkey? Ask your newsletter subscribers what they really think about the site and how it could beimproved.
Remove low quality content
Panda doesn’t like low quality content, so get rid of it. Some people say you only need to ‘noindex’ the content where as others say that you need to fully get rid of the content by 301’ing the content or 404’ing it. There is no one simple fix here, personally I am in favor of simply noindexing low quality content or better still just improve the content. If the content doesn’t really serve any purpose then just bin it.
One thing I would say here is that if you have content which you honestly believe is good and valuable then don’t go binning half of your website. Understand how Google is trying to judge websites and see how it can be improved. I have seen pages getting traffic when the Google Keyword Tool was telling me there was zero people searching for the phrases each month, so should these pages get binned? If they are driving quality traffic to your website then I would keep them and put them on the ‘improvement list’.
Create high quality content
Where does your content come from at the minute? Scraped? Duplicated? XML Feed? Affiliate sites? Or is it just low quality human created content or poor quality user generated information? Still surprised you got hit by Panda?
Re-read the list of websites who have benefited from Panda then re-read again. Study those websites. Why are they successful when others aren’t? It is blindingly obvious that the people who have benefited from Panda are those who have fantastic content. If you provide the best information (or anything for that matter) then you fall into the category of a ‘brand‘ by default.
Think if you and a handful of competitors were selling cheap nasty products in a specific niche where there is demand for this. Who is seen to be the best in that market (and the best for a certain search query)? The company who is doing better than everyone else.
If you don’t provide the highest quality content and information on your website for the specific keyword(s) you are trying to rank for, then do you really deserve to rank number one? Like wise, if you do provide the highest quality content and information on your website for that specific keyword(s) you are trying to rank for, then do you really deserve to rankanywhere but number one?
Instead of having low quality pages which are very similar, for example ‘how to skin a cat’ and ’10 ways to skin a cat’ why not create one great piece of content on the subject instead? Aim to remove / combine your lower quality pages of your website into something much better. If there is a valid need to keep things separately then do so and look atimproving the quality of those pages in the process.
Have a watch of this quick 2 minutes video about how good websites that don’t know about SEO can still rank well, it gives some insight into what Google are looking for (if you really need any further evidence)
What is high quality content?
Lets take a few examples of what is good content VS what is bad content. Firstly lets take the search term ‘how to tie your shoe laces’ and here it what is obviously a very poor website for that query
Now I think anyone can see why this page is totally unsuitable for the searchers query. The rest of the page above is just full of adverts and useless information and navigation, the above is the only real content on the page, I have just cut out the rest of the jump from the page so it is clear what is on the page. The person responding to the question is struggling to speak in full words and sentences. Would I really trust this person providing the information? I think I would rather have a go myself than follow this persons advice! (and yes, I can already tie my shoe laces before anyone asks! )
If I couldn’t tie my shoelaces then here is what I would look for in high quality content (click on the image to open the full size view to read the comments)
Here is what one of the ‘knot’ pages looks like when you click through (click on the image to open the full size view to read the comments)
A couple of things that would make this page even better for content would be including some more videos and then add some more social sections to the page such as user comments etc. Whilst the user can feedback in terms of voting it would be useful for people to leave some real textual (or even images and videos their self) feedback.
Can you clearly see the difference here? Now is it clear why Ian’s website ranks #1 for how to tie your shoe laces?
Great content brings long tail traffic which gets users involved in your site, and because you have great content (as you are now on with creating this to recover from Panda, aren’t you!) they will share it socially and build some natural links for you which ultimately helps with your rankings. It all starts with great content!
Great content requires both quantitative and qualitative information, research and a knowledgeable person to knit it all together. Employ a content manager for your site and give them a budget and resources to put the content live as quickly as possible. Then promote this via social media to increase the impact.
Make your website the source of information people quote. Stop spinning content from other sources into your own unique content for search engines. Instead go and get some information that no-one else has. This is the true way to beat Panda.
Just add loads and loads of great high quality content!
Engage with your websites customers
Google announced an algorithm update back in November 2011 which was all about providing fresh content to searchers. How can you provide fresh content to your users? Well engaging with customers on your website can be a great way, include a commenting section on your product pages, encourage reviews of your products or service, and how about going the whole length and creating a nice community and high quality user generated content platform for your customers. People love to engage so let them!
Build high quality links to your site
Some people claim that Panda is a links based algorithm, some people disagree. Until Google officially announces either way then no-one will know. So carry on building some great high quality links to your website. Look at building links for people and not for search engines.
With no-one knowing if Panda is a links based algorithm or not then it would be fair to say that if you have a lot of low quality links from poor quality websites (such as press release websites or article websites) then if their rankings have suffered (which they will have done as they are ‘low quality’) then this is bound to have a knock on effect to your website.
If you aim to drive traffic to your website from the links you are building then you are on to a winner. High quality and relevant links.
Add real value!
The video below was released by Google on 19th March 2012 and is an absolute must watch if you want to recover from Google Panda.
As you can see from the video, Google recommends the following…
Avoid these common SEO mistakes;
Having no value proposition – If you don’t offer anything unique as a business then why do you exist?
Segmented approach to SEO within large organisations – Make sure the left hand knows what the right is doing and everyone within the company is working together towards a common goal. Results will be much greater.
Time-consuming workarounds – This is basically talking about stop trying to ‘trick’ the search engines and instead focus on best practices.
Don’t get caught in SEO trends – I.e. Same point as above really, focus on what is going to bring long lasting visitors to your website.
Slow iterations – In other words, speed up your development process and be the first to get new technologies out of the door. If you can speed up your ‘flight time’ from the initial idea to launching then you will stay ahead of your competitors and gain a competitive advantage.
Google also list a further six fundamental SEO tips of things to do;
Do something cool! – Says it all really!!
Include relevant keywords in your copy – Whilst they do say not to focus on keyword density, you still need to include relevant keywords within your content for which you want to rank.
Be smart about your tags and site architecture – Optimise your title tags and meta descriptions to increase clicks to your site.
Sign up for email forwarding in Google Webmaster Tools – In other words, keep up to date with the messages Google is sending you.
Attract buzz – Natural links, +1s, likes, follows and any other social signals. Be interesting, surprising or entertaining as a business and this will happen naturally.
Stay fresh and relevant – Are you present on social media? Do you have a mobile website? Are you keeping your content up to date?
Some great tips from Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google. If you want to read the full blog post from Google then seeGoogle Webmaster Tools.
How not to recover from Panda
I am going to be as polite as possible here, but Panda is all about providing high quality websites to users. Some websites have unfortunately got caught up in the low quality trap which makes their recovery a little more challenging than others, but either way the advice outlined above still stands.
For websites who have seriously suffered from the Panda update, well it’s quite simple, your website has suffered because Google deems your websites as shit (for whatever reason). Cold hard fact.
You are not going to recover from Panda by re-organising your website into a different shape, you still have a shit website. Tweaking a H1, meta title, meta description, restructuring your website or lots of other small pointless changes aren’t going to make a difference. Don’t get me wrong here, if all those things need improving or fixing anyway then get them improved, but don’t expect that if these aren’t too bad in the first place that by doing all those changes that Google is going to automatically bring your site back.
Above is an example of what you are ultimately trying to do, trying to make a square from the same round pieces. It doesn’t work like that! Instead think of the bigger picture, if you want to build a square then you need to add some bits to the edges to make it bigger (and in the right shape).
Another blindingly obvious thing on what not to focus on when fixing Panda issues is trying to increase user metrics without actually changing much on the page. Instead make big bold changes to see some significant results, add much better content and generally make your website far better and easier to use. Don’t just try and manipulate ‘user metrics’ to game Google’s Panda algorithm (if user metrics are being used, which no-one knows for certain).
If you actually make your website better then your user metrics are going to increase by default.
Affiliate websites in a post Panda world
Some affiliate websites have been hit quite hard in the Panda update, mainly because the affected sites were set up purely to generate affiliate commissions and not actually add any value for the end user. The action plan for affiliates is really the same as any website that has been hit by Panda and that is to ask yourself why you, more importantly your website, actually exists.
Google doesn’t hate affiliates, it hates affiliates who don’t add any value for the user. Think about where you can add value for your customers and focus on that. If you don’t offer anything extra over the people who you are partnering with then why would Google rank your website high in the search results when they could just rank the main website at the top instead?
Affiliate marketing used to be as simple as getting a keyword rich domain within your niche, finding all of the related keywords in your niche from Google Keyword Tool and creating a bunch of pages with low quality keyword rich content of approximately 500 words then build a few back links in your niche and get reciprocal links or one way links if you were better. Not any longer though. More about adding real value.
Quotes from other people in the SEO community
All of this post so far is my conclusion/opinion based on what I have read about Panda over the past 12 months. Lets see what other SEO experts in the community have to say on the matter. I asked a few others in the SEO about how they would beat Panda and here is what they said….
Question: What are the three key areas you would focus on to beat Panda?
Identify weak pages and NoIndex them or kill them entirely. This is one of the factors that nailed a lot of sites. Those low value pages that you put up just to garner search traffic? Time for them to go. We led one site out of the Panda morass through this change all by itself.
Step Two:
Check your user engagement vs. competition. You can do this using services like Compete.com. It won’t show you bounce rate, but it will show you other metrics such as time on site, page views per visitor, and the percentage of your visitors that are there for the first time. These metrics can help you see if users are more engaged with your competitor’s sites than yours.
Work on making yours better than that of the competition. Your pocketbook will thank you for it even if it is not your Panda issue.
Step Three:
Cut back on the advertising. Some sites that got his were heavy on the advertising. While I don’t think this was a direct signal in Panda (that was something that Google made a ranking factor much later), it can still drive reduced engagement, and we have seen sites where this was the issue.
Step Four:
You asked for 3? So much for my listening skills. Look at the balance of your inbound link signals. Have all your links from one type of source? Bad idea. Don’t limit this to links either. Have 10,000 great links and no one is talking about you on the web? Also a bad idea. A site with 6,000 similar quality links and active social conversations will kick your site to the curb every time.“
Steve Overton, SEO Manager for Northern Europe at Searchmetrics
“Step 1:
The Google Panda update principally targeted those websites that in Google’s algorithms opinion offered little or no value… in other words those that had thin or duplicate content, were perceived as spammy with too many adverts above the fold and had non authoritative links.
To address the effect of Panda, I would firstly conduct a site audit and understand which pages were most affected and suffered the biggest drop in the SERPs, review those pages and either re-write the content so that they are unique and informative, or take action to delete it either physically or by adding a noindex tag to the page or move it to a sub-domain.
Step 2:
Secondly, review the page design to reduce adsense adverts above the fold. Track the bounce rates in analytics or track conversions on the page to ensure that the “quality” is maximised.
Step 3:
Thirdly, review your referring domains to ensure that the quality of your backlinks are not harming your ranking. A quick review of the referring domain in Searchmetrics SEO Visibility will provide some insight as to the quality of the referring domain.”
Start a link building campaign immediately. The goals would be to increase branded search term volume, increase social media presence by initiating conversation and of course, building fresh, authoritative, editorial links.
Up until recently, we felt that link building wouldn’t help you get out of Panda, but we are seeing evidence of sites who have very strong brand awareness and link profiles not being hit by Panda despite big onsite problems.
Step 2:
Find any duplicate content from your site in Google’s index and get rid of it. This can include duplication caused by parameters, repetitive text content to duplicate title tags. Everything needs to be cleaned up and unique and you should be as aggressive as possible.
Dave Sottimano, SEO Consultant at Distilled
Step 3:
Get a second opinion on what people think of your site. Panda was based on human quality rater questions that you can easily replicate using Mechanical Turk surveys. If enough respondents say they wouldn’t buy from your site, you might be looking at a complete re-design. Will Critchlow pioneered this method and shows how to do it here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/replicate-googles-panda-questionnaire-whiteboard-friday “
“Escaping Panda is like transforming a fallen apart ruin into a shiny new property. Tear down, rebuild, expand:
Step 1:
Tear down ruins: Delete all existing duplicate content where possible, use canonical tags for the rest. Delete all low quality content, fix grammar and spelling if necessary. Cut down your ads.
Step 2:
Rebuild using existing subnstance: Aggregate your content onto fewer pages. Effectively use 301 redirects to consolidate authority signals. You will have fewer pages to rank but they will be much stronger.
Step 3:
Expand: Produce new high quality content and promote it to get new backlinks. Make your site fresh!“
Content: Remove, consolidate or no index thin content pages created purely to chase the long tail. Ensure that the content on remaining pages is totally unique and relevant. Focus on engagement. Pages with high bounce rates can be an indicator of low quality.
Review your content syndication tactics. If you are distributing every piece of content produced for your site you are asking for trouble. Much better to keep the majority of content on your site unique and produce different content to syndicate to third parties.
Step 2:
Links: Conduct a review of your link building campaign starting with an analysis of competitors in your space that rank top 3. Build links that emulate their link landscape. This does not mean that you should get links from every source that they have, more that you should aim to get those ‘type’ of links. This includes site type, anchor text mix and PR spread.
Focus on quality over quantity by acquiring links on sites with an engaged audience and evidence of social media sharing. In addition, you could look to remove any poor quality links that you may have built in the past. Hundreds or thousands of site wide links from inferior blogs can affect the overall quality of your back link profile.
Step 3:
Social: Ensure that your site has brand pages on Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and Google +. This may seem obvious but it’s amazing how many sites don’t have. To be seen as a brand you need to act like a brand! Make sure you are making it as easy as possible for visitors to your site to share your content by providing prominent sharing buttons.
To be honest, every site should be employing the above tactics regardless of whether they have been pandalised or not!“
Quote from David Addison
David Addison, Managing Partner at Dirigo Design & Development
Begin to fixate about the end-user. This is your North Star. It will guide you to recovery. Google wants to provide the most value to the end user. At the end of the day, Google only wins by serving the most useful content. Google’s survival is at stake here. Panda is a game changer. The old PR search patent went nonexclusive last year. Google is searching for a new/better model. One that cannot be gamed. The painting Emerald Sea by Albert Bierstadt sums it up in a visual.This is Google unless they can break into the social space and provide the best search results.
Poor quality sites are going to be expunged from the engines. Panda is updated periodically and behaves like a penalty. Get outside help to identify blind spots. I am no FARMER. But I certainly farmed (with small letters). I learned how to make big money by publishing really good content. Over an eight year period I let analytics drive my content schedule.
Without even noticing it, I generated a huge mass of semi-duplicative content. Okay, it was duplicative! Not what I would have termed duplicative content a year ago. And it was not low-end content. This stuff cost several thousand dollars a page. It was journal researched and written from scratch. Nonetheless, duplicative by the new definition. Kill it. Noindex it. Just get rid of the duplicate stuff. You have nothing to lose. I unlinked hundreds of pages with a production cost of $500k. Dump it. You can always add it back later after retooling it later.
Step 2:
Align internal anchor text to ensure that all anchor text points one direction (e.g. all xyz links should point to page ABC. My linking had become digital spaghetti.). I aligned 70K internal site links – a painful process. Take a hard look at your inbound links. Link building and blog seeding should appear natural. Stop any outright manipulation.
In case you missed step one, delete duplicative content. Saying the same thing in different words no longer works. Use a keyword tool like SEOQuake. Do you have lots of pages with the same exact top kw phrases? Add user generated content with FB or Disqus. Meaningful engagement from authentic users helps.
Ensure that your authors/site has authority. Be credible. Build authority. Would you give your site a credit card? Would you trust it for life and death medical advice? Fixate on bounce rate and time on site. These are indicators of value. Survey your users. Focus group them if you have the budget.
Like many, I believe that human quality scores are a factor with Panda. Matt Cutts said to make it look like Apple packaging – ”Think about something like an Apple product, when you buy an Apple product you open it up, the box is beautiful, the packaging is beautiful, the entire experience is really wonderful.” So, make your site beautiful and wonderful.
Step 3:
Settle in for the long haul. Adjust your business model and livelihood for less revenue. I lost seven figures and eight fine employees. It took me six months and 10,000+ tech hours to escape Panda. The entire event was a black box. Keep moving. Don’t wait for signals or clear direction. Follow the North Star in Setp One. No stone should be left unturned.
We edited 10% of our pages. We reskinned several thousand pages, upgraded the www and db servers for better speed, deployed a CDN, move to sprites, paralyzed downloads, externalized all js, html validated, compressed images, built a new UI, completely replaced all navigation, added FB, Twitter, G+, AddThis/ShareThis, FB comments, disqus comments, open graph tags, rel author tags, replaced most graphics…
We tackled cascading 301 redirect problems, filed hundreds of DMCA notices, threatened three large inbound linkers with legal action. We chewed up 20 people working overtime for 6 months in a living hell to fix every know technical issue – no matter how small. It would take 150 bullets to list all that we did. And to this day, we don’t know which was the magic bullet. We do know that we have a stronger better site.
Escaping Panda is going to take time and cost lots. Gaming the system is short sighted. The algo is too complicated with too many signals that cannot all be manipulated in unison. Focus on adding true value. Low-end SEO is dead. Despite having a good ROI, low-end SEO has always been short sighted. Spend your money building something that is the very best. When and if you recover, change your business model. Google is not your friend. We’ve moving into traditional media (radio, print and TV) after almost ten years of pure-play internet.”
Summary
I hope this post is useful for anyone reading and has got across the point that to recover from Google Panda then there needs to be a seriouschange of thinking for the business / websites as a whole. SEO is no longer about tricking Google into ranking a website higher, but about genuinely providing the best / highest quality website possible.
Doing so will mean that your site will survive future algorithm changes since Google is aiming to find high quality sites, so instead of trying to blend in with what are good websites why not actually become a good website that Google tries to base its algorithms on instead. Provide real value to your users.
If all this hasn’t convinced you how to ‘fix Panda‘ then have a good read of the interview of Vanessa Fox by Eric Enge over at Stone Temple abouta holistic look at Panda, fantastic interview. Ask yourself what is your raison d’être?
Panda Resources
Here is a list of all the websites quoted in this blog post for reference and easy of referring to if needed.
Nothing new in terms of solutions to Panda because the Panda algorithm is all about promoting the best websites to the top and pushing lower quality ones to the bottom. It’s as simple as that really.
All of the insights (not guessing) within this post have come from 12 months studying the impact of Panda, who has recovered, what they have done and what this means for everyone else. Along with running through Panda recoveries with websites I have been working on.
To recover from Panda is a long process and requires an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears. There is no silver bullet.
I must appreciate the kind of time and effort you put in this post. I am an SEO company. I am also fighting Panda. I got success with service based and product based websites. But I am still struggling with affiliate sites. The think content problem.
The products are from health industry, and most of the information is already published on official websites and few other top sites. Nothing left to write new. I don’t understand how to deal with that situation. I can guess new kind of comparison, list of something or something like that… but seriously most of the stuff is already there.
Do need to have our own labs and do experiments and researches and then write new thing on website and then get ranks?? Seems Panda is anti-affiliate. Will you like to share your thoughts around it? Thanks in advance.
Sounds like you have your work cut out with helping your health client recover from Panda as an affiliate. I wouldn’t say Panda is anti-affiliate per-say, instead I believe Panda to be anti-no-value-affiliates. You have to ask yourself (or the client) the question about any affiliate websites, why is it there? What value does the affiliate website have over the main merchant.
If the affiliate really doesn’t add any value then why would Google rank an affiliate website (likely with no brand, little social activity and low quality or duplicate content – I’m generalising a little there mind!) above the main merchants website, would would arguably have more positive signals than the affiliate?
Affiliate marketing has had a good free ride for quite some time in Google’s search results, but in a post Panda world one has to ask why they are there at all.
For affiliate websites to succeed post Panda they need to really add value above and beyond what is already available from the merchant.
I hope that is of some use and good luck to recovering from the Google Panda update!
I suggest re-reading the section about what websites Panda was targeting then take an honest look at your site. Compare this to some of the other review websites who are ranking top for your keywords.
Looking at your site for 30 seconds, it is pretty clear why your site may have been impacted. Just follow the Panda recovery steps outlined above and look at where you can truly add value to your website. Good luck and I hope you manage to recover from Panda.
Regardless of which Panda update hit your site, the recovery plan is the same. Ultimately just look at ways to make your website better and add real value. How badly were you hit?
When public agency databases first came online in the mid-90’s we worked to find those databases and put them into a free directory to make them easy for people to find. We evaluated them, wrote a description of each that included helpful tips, and expanded it from a few dozen databases to now more than 55,000. When Google came along they made us #1 for “public records” (where we still stand) along with many other state, county, and local terms.
We developed innovative search tools, made the site so that you could search geographically or by type of public record, and worked tirelessly to make the site better and to add more databases.
Our reward was that hundreds of web sites copied us and since we’re just a small family-owned business we went into deep debt fighting them.
Then Panda came along a year ago and we got bludgeoned. Every state page dropped precipitously and every county page was blocked from appearing in Google’s results. We’ve lost 80% of our traffic and are now about to lose our business and our home– because of an algorithm.
Google says that they only punish bad sites– but their definition is tautological: If you’re bad you’ll be punished, and if you’re punished you must have been bad.
We’re a great site that provides a valuable service. We don’t deserve this and nothing we do to solve it has any impact at all.
I feel your pain. I can understand how your site has got caught up in the Panda algorithm, with aggregating data sets (i.e. no unique content) plus a lot of competitors doing the same thing. Unfortunately, many of the same signals are on low quality spam and scraper websites.
I sometimes get the feeling that Google is just trying to wipe out any kind of comparison / aggregator websites as they believe that is their job. Take their latest one within the travel industry, Google Hotel Finder – a direct attack on all of the large online travel agencies. Morally, is it really Google’s job to be the “comparison and answers engine”, or should it be there simply to provide a pointer towards who has the best answer for that query (opposed to answering the query their self within the search results)
There have been many stories of people going through true financial difficulty all down to this one ‘little’ algorithm change, some websites deserve to have been hit – others don’t and have simply got caught up in the net.
I do hope that things turn out for the best.
Out of interest, what have you tried so far which hasn’t helped recover from Panda?
You’re not the first person to tell me that our content is “thin,” and that all that work to write helpful descriptions of each database may be helpful to people who are looking for information, but worthless for Google.
It’d take another week to list out all the changed we’ve made over the last year to recover from Panda. We’ve had expert advice and made hundreds of changes, yet nothing we do seems to have any effect. Send me an email and I’ll respond with the list.
There are a lot of useful conferences within the SEO / SEM industry around the world every year and while it would be nice to attend all of them, it is likely you will only get the time to go to a few of them.
Below is an interactive map of where some of the main SEO conferences in 2012 are being hosted.
Search Marketing Expo are having 11 SEO conferences around the world in 2012 so there should be something for everyone within a few hours flying at least.
SMX Jerusalem
Date: 15th January 2012
Venue:Inbal Hotel, Liberty Bell Park, 3, Jabotinsky St. 92145, Jerusalem, Israel
Note: The information on SMX is conflicting on the website, so double check if you want to book this as I cannot guarantee the date / venue is correct!
This should provide you with a nice starting point for the conferences available around the world related to SEO in 2012. I will have no doubt missed some off the list, so please feel free to add in the comments other conferences you believe should be added to the list and I will see what I can do.
P.S. I am open to offers for free tickets from the conference organisers on behalf of me creating this wonderful map / reference page and feel free to include it into your website if you like it
Well I thought I would make a few predictions about how I can see the SEO industry changing in 2012. These predictions are in no particular order, except the order in which they popped into my head.
1. Social Signals Gain Importance
It is clear how important social signals already are for SEO and with the launch of Google Plus in 2011, this is only going to get bigger. Since the launch of Google Plus, Google has been pushing their service down everyone’s throats at every possible opportunity to increase the membership.
Eric Schmidt announced recently that social signals are already a ranking signal.
“The social signal, the people you ‘hang with’ is actually a ranking signal”
That said, Google have been using social signals as a ranking factor since late 2010 as it seen in the video below from Matt Cutts although they were only using is “relatively lightly for now” (Dec 2010) back then.
So I predict this is going to become an even more important SEO ranking signal in 2012. This linked in with the Authorship markup which I will mention further down the article.
2. High Quality Content is Imperative for SEO Success
Throughout 2011 Google has blessed the SEO industry with their Panda updates which have wiped out some businesses because they apparently aren’t ‘good enough’ in the eyes of Google.
High quality content is going to be the key to ranking well in 2012. This is not just because better quality content contains more useful and relevant information for the user, which in turn makes the page rank better than other sites with poorer quality content, but the fact that high quality content is what people talk about. When was the last time you shared/tweeted/liked a piece of poor quality content? My guess is never. What you do share with your friends is high quality content.
Win win all round, high quality content help your pages rank better and because it is high quality it then generates natural links back to your website. But it all starts with content which is then promoted well.
I predict there will be many more Panda updates in 2012 which will follow on from the ones throughout 2011.
3. Rich Media Becomes More Important
Following on from the point above about high quality content, I see Rich Media being an integral part of this. If you have a look at some of the winners / losers from the recent Panda updates then it is clear to see the reason why websites like How Stuff Works have benefited so much from the updates.
These types of websites contain a lot of great information. They contain lots of useful text, good quality images and diagrams explaining how thing work, interviews with relevant industry experts and videos of the items being discussed. There is not
Be creative and provide some great content. I recently created an interactive Google Map which shows SEO Conferences in 2012 around the world, and Thompson recently created a cool infographic showing aworld map of music.
4. Google Providing Answers Directly Within Search Results
Google has been providing more and more answers directly within the search results over the past 12 months, a lot of which has been helped with people marking up their content with Rich Snippets. That said, there has also been a lot of answers that have been showing up within the search results for queries where there is no obvious markup behind this, one of which was when I was searching for ‘who owns Expedia‘ and the same is happening for other queries such as ‘president of America‘ (just in case you didn’t know who that was!).
I predict that in 2012 there is going to be further investigations and legal requirements for Google to change their behavior in some way that provides more competition or openness and could possibly lead to a similar situations where Microsoft found their self back in the late 90’s.
6. Mobile SEO Gains Traction
In the past mobile SEO hasn’t particularly been that important since Google wasn’t doing anything differently for mobile sites than they were for normal desktop websites. Recently though, Google announced that they would be displaying mobile site URLs directly in the search resultsfor users who are searching from a mobile device.
Whilst mobile websites for business are extremely important since theyconvert far better than a full desktop site when viewed from a mobile device, I predict for 2012 there will be a lot more importance towards mobile SEO. This includes the crawlability of the mobile site, the normal optimisation techniques used on the desktop site, the ability to flick between the mobile site and the full desktop site and vice versa.
It may even emerge that Google introduces a new meta tag designed specifically to be used on the mobile websites which works in a similar way to the canonical tag. So you would place the tag on the mobile page which says that ‘this page is a mobile page of this desktop site page’.
Now this is a little bit of an eye grabbing title and I don’t mean to say that Google is not going to be looking at back links as a ranking signal, more that Google is going to be focusing on the quality of back links coming to your website. This has always been the case for Google, but again, this has been relatively easy to game by purchasing high quality back links in the past or even ‘sponsoring events’ or ‘affiliate schemes / links’ which, whatever way you look at this, is a paid link.
The best opportunities for anyone in 2012 is to focus on the high quality back links that competitors would find difficult to copy. These could be with some strategic partnerships with other influential businesses / websites. Once you have these partnerships in place it becomes a working relationship that you have and not merely a plain old boring back link to your website.
These things take time to generate, but are ultimately the right thing to do since they cannot be copied easily if at all. An example of one of these back links would be from certain companies that you work with, whether that is a supplier of goods or services.
I predict that high quality links along with social links are going to be key items in 2012.
8. Only Google Reviews Are Used
Google currently uses reviews on their places pages and products from a variety of sources including Review Centre and Ciao and even has review feeds from certain people where this is used to populate review information onto some of their products. Google also recommends that people mark up their review content that that they can read it easier, and more importantly store this in a structured DB easier than trying to parse lots of bad markup!
Last year (or possibly the year before) Google introduced their own reviews platform which was used to populate information on their Google Places pages. Over the past 12 months though, Google has slowly been phasing out some of its key partners it used to work with and instead just showing Google’s own reviews which have been left by people with a Google account.
With the introduction of Google Plus last year, then this is only going to make it easier for Google to capture more reviews of anything and everything and will eventually mean that they have more reviews than the partners who used to provide this data.
The current problem Google has with reviews that are left is the same problem that faces all review websites and that is that they have no idea if the person has actually bought or used the product they are reviewing. They could just be a competitor who wants to slate another product so that they gain a bit of the market share. I wouldn’t put it past some companies! There was even a TV program on Channel 4 last year about how some unfair negative reviews which had been left on Trip Advisor actually ruined certain hotels.
Having a think through how Google would get around this, and it would be relatively simple for them to assess who is a genuine reviewer based on their new Google Plus platform. For example, if someone has a lot of genuine friends / discussions / fans / followers / people in circles / pictures uploaded / interactions etc, then it would be fair to assume they are a real person and not a bot. So it would be possible to create something like a “People Rank” which would be some kind of score given to each individual person to decide if what they are saying is either worth while or a load of rubbish, in a very similar way they rank web pages.
So I predict for 2012 that Google will push more of its partners away and only show their own reviews on Google products, where as previously they used to show reviews from different sources around the web.
9. Bing Gains Market Share
Over the past few years Bing has slowly been gaining market share and according to comScore, it actually increased its market share from 11.2% back in September 2010 to 15.00% in November 2011 which is considerable growth! This was likely helped with the partnership with Facebook and providing their web search results.
In addition, Microsoft also have the Xbox console and has recently begun advertising a cool function with their Kinect Voice Search where you just ask the Xbox to ‘search Bing’. Owning the hardware that people use to connect to the internet is a massive advantage to increasing market share.
I predict that in 2012 Bing could actually reach a 20% market share if not more if they continue with the advertising push.
10. Google Gets More Personal
Google is certainly moving more and more towards personalised search results based on websites you have visited before, based on people you follow on twitter and based on your friends within your social circles on Google Plus.
I recently did a joke post about how Google introduced the ‘no panda penalty’ meta tag and when searching for this on Google is is clear there is some personalisation happening since I tweeted this on Twitter.
I predict we will be seeing a lot more personalisation in the search results through 2012.
11. The Death of SEO
I haven’t seen anyone rant on about the death of SEO for a while, so I am going to put this into my SEO predictions for 2012. :-p
Seems like a strange thing to say? Well let me clarify a little, since SEO is blatantly not going to die a horrible death. What I mean when I say this is that the old traditional approach to SEO is going to be dead. So the old skool idea of buying a keyword rich domain, creating a bunch pages targeted at your niche phrases, then adding a few paragraphs of keyword rich generic copy to those pages and maybe a couple of images, building a few back links from directories and there you have it – ranking #1.
If only it was that easy! That old skool approach to SEO is well on its way out, especially with the Panda updates last year. SEO in 2012 is about being remarkable. Be a Purple Cow and create a Big Moo!
12. Authorship Becomes Essential For Content
Google announced the introduction of Authorship Markup in 2011 and it hasn’t been the easiest of things to implement and as traditionally shown by Google, they will not always use it even if you do end up marking up your content. But I can certainly see Google promoting authorship a lot more prominently in 2012.
It makes sense really since it is another way to analyse the quality of the content that has been wrote. If an influential person writes a guest blog post on another website then this can all be linked up nicely.
I can predict that having authorship markup in 2012 will be essential for any content driven websites and it could easily be linked in with the ‘People Rank’ I mentioned earlier.
13. Twitter Launches Analytics Platform
Twitter announced back in September that they were rolling out Twitter Web Analytics which was being tested with a small pilot group of partners. I predict (and hope!) that Twitter will finally launch this long awaited product in 2012. Hopefully this will be free, but I imagine there will be some kind of pricing behind it for large companies since this would be a way for Twitter to start to bring in a few more pennies.
Summary
I predict that there are going to be a lot of changes within the SEO industry in 2012 and it is going to take a lot of focus and determination for companies to succeed online. It is going to be imperative to offer the best source of information, including rich media, for the user and market this well over social channels. Those who do these things well will see a solid future for their rankings.
If you have got your own SEO predictions for 2012 then please add these into the comments.
4 thoughts on “13 SEO Predictions for 2012”
Not much to add here Michael, I think *most* of these predictions are valid. I’d really like to see Microsoft step up their search efforts, but if I had to bet on a number 2 – I’d put my money on Yandex.
Yes I think some of the overseas search engines will be working hard to enter the western markets. Baidu is another possibility that could begin to show, especially if it gets its way by buying Yahoo!
I certainly hope that social signals become more important as I think it will help to sort the wood from the chaff. i.e. give good quality sites with genuine engagement a chance to rise above those that buy their rankings.
There will always be people trying to game the system so the more sophisticated the algorithm gets the better IMHO.
I also think that geo-located triggers will come more into play. Very handy if you have a few hundred store locations at your disposal
Re ‘the death of SEO’. SEO will never die as long as there are search engines! The ‘art’ will continue to evolve though. It’s becoming more and more important to work as a team with social, marketing and development colleagues in order to achieve maximum results. Companies that don’t get this will be the ones that get left behind.
Great points Caroline! I certainly hope that social signals also allow Google to see who is really engaged with a company/brand/website. Looking at the data they have at their disposal, I can see how this would work already.
Agree with the better algorithm so make it harder to game, this way it takes the focus off minor ‘things’ that really don’t make that much difference. Much better to spend time and energies on making something truly great. Google is trying to match a selection of websites to a users query, so make the website/content/product highly relevant by becoming the market leader. This way, no matter how Google changes their algorithm, the website will still be #1. It is the key to long term success.
In this how to guide, I am going to walk you through how to create your own interactive Google Maps which look great. You can see an example of one that I did for SEO Conferences 2012 which is shown below. The map below is what you will end up with after running through this step by step process.
You will need to be logged in to run through this process using your normal Google account.
Step 2 – Click on “My Places” link
Step 3 – Click on “Create Map”
Step 4 – Enter your map description
Make sure you select the correct privacy settings for you map since this will determine who can / cannot see the map you create.
Now next you have two different options on how you want to create your interactive Google Map. The first option is using their user interface which is quite useful for the simple maps you want to create. The second option is to create a KML file and upload this so the map is created automatically, although this option does require some reasonable programming skills to be able to do well.
For this guide I am going to be running through the simple user interface provided by Google for creating these maps since this is what most people will require. For anyone looking for more details on KML files and how to implement then have a good read through Google’s KML tutorial since this provides sufficient information for you to be able to create your own scripts. Once you have created the script then click on the “import” button in the screenshot above, where you will be presented with a screen for uploading your newly created KML file.
Step 5 – Find your location on the map
Anyway, for this tutorial your next step is to find your location that you want to pintpoint / create on your new Google Map. You can do this either by navigating to the correct location as you would normally use Google Maps, or you can search for a specific location as I have in the screenshot below (don’t worry, when you search, this won’t lose any of your map information that you have previously created).
Step 6 – Create a point
Once your location has been identified, then you can do what you like here. There are several options available to you including creating a specific point on the map (ideal for actual places such as a hotel / bar / restaurant etc) or you can create an area using a polygon.
Below is the step to create a specific point on the map which is achieved by clicking on the small blue pointer icon (top highlight), then clicking the location on the map where you want this item to be placed (bottom highlight), which in turn opens the main box up where you can enter some details about the map (middle highlight).
You can enter details in normal text or rich text which can include colourful text, bullet points, hyperlinks and images. Once you click on the “Ok” button, the point you have just created will be added to your map permanently.
Step 7 – Personalise your icon
The little blue pointer is a little boring. So it is easy to create your own image which can be personalised to whatever you like. Simply click on the small blue pointer which is highlighted below to reveal more information how to do this.
Once you click on the button above, you will see the other options for pointers that are available for you to use. Alternatively you can create your own images and use those by clicking on the “Add an icon” link. I would always prefer to use your own personalised images opposed to the ones provided by Google since you can brand these and make them look far better.
When you click on the “Add an icon” link, you will be asked to provide a link to the image that you would like to use. The image is not stored with Google, so you will need to upload this to your web server for this part to work correctly.
Once you have provided the URL for the image you want to use then this icon is then added to your “My icons” section so you can re-use this again if you need to add many of the same images for different places. The image will also now be added to your point that you created on the map earlier, instead of showing the original blue pointer.
If you are interested in doing something more than just a point, then have a play around with the different options available. Click on the polygon icon shown below to use different options. The available options are for drawing a line, drawing a line along roads and drawing a shape, all of which you can then to the same process as described above to personalise the information and icons etc.
Step 8 – Repeat
Repeat steps 5 to 7 until you have added all of the different items on your interactive Google Map.
Step 9 – Share your new map
Now you have created your amazing map, tell the world about it!
Simply click on the small chain icon shown in the screenshot above (top left highlight) and select how you would like to share your newly created map. Either just email them the link through or embed the map into your website / blog like I did at the start of this blog post.
It’s as simple as that! Go and have a play and create some great content for your website visitors and customers.
Image references
Here are the images I used to create the different icons on the interactive maps and for the images within the HTML of the information for the points.
As an SEO working in house or agency side there will be a time when you have to assess a website after it has been re-designed to ensure the rankings remain steady. I have put this SEO checklist together to help with this process and to ensure some of the obvious checks aren’t overlooked.
Throughout my career as an SEO I have been through a lot of full website redesigns and each has gone smoothly without impacting the rankings, some of which included a full change of URL structure across hundreds of thousands of pages. This basic SEO checklist has helped the rankings remain steady throughout the various website redesigns, so hopefully they will be of some use to you as well.
I have created a Google Doc listing all of these checks so that you can go through them one by one and tick off each page when checking through the new website. I find this process to be extremely valuable and systematic to ensure all of the key SEO areas of the site haven’t been accidentally damaged during a redesign.
Here is a quick screenshot of the SEO checklist, but I do recommend reading the comments below as they explain what each section on the spreadsheet means.
SEO Checklist
Robots.txt
Ensure the robots.txt hasn’t accidentally noindexedthe entire site. If the site was using the robots.txt file prior to the redesign, then check this is still the same as it was previously (unless it was wrong in the first place!). It is also possible that certain pages or directories may have been accidentally noindexed so keep an eye out for this too.
Meta Robots Tag
Following on from the above, it is also important to check all of the main pages throughout the site to ensure a “index, follow” tag hasn’t accidentally changed to “noindex, follow” as this would be really bad. The two characters that can bring your site to its knees, ‘no’.
URL Structure
Very important to check that the URL structure throughout the website hasn’t changed for some reason. When developing code for large scale websites it can be very useful to append certain identifiers to make URLs map to certain scripts which then parse the URL and get the information from a database. For example www.website.com/pageone-identifier.html where any URLs containing ‘identifier.html’ would be passed through to a certain script which would get the content for ‘pageone’.
So keep a close eye out for any changes that could have been done here. Even adding one single character to a URL or making one of the characters uppercase will impact your rankings, since as far as Google is concerned those are totally brand new URLs which have no relation on the old ones.
If it is required that the URLs change as part of the site redesign, and this can happen, then it is important that the old URLs are 301 redirected to their new URLs so that the site is still benefiting from any back links that have been generated to those pages. I have worked on websites where it was required that hundreds of thousands of URLs needed changing as part of the redesign and can confirm that as long as all of the 301 redirects are in place then everything will go smoothly. Just make sure these aren’t accidentally a 302 redirect though!
On this note, it is also possible that during the redesign that a chain of redirects could emerge meaning the old URL would 301 to an intermediate URL which would then 301 to the new URL. This is to be avoided and there is generally very little need to do something like this. Use a tool such as Fiddler to see what is happening.
Header Response Codes
This one is very unlikely to crop up during a website redesign, but it is worth checking to be safe. Since header codes can be altered to say whatever you like, then it is quite possible that a 404, 500 or 503 header code could be returned whilst the page content is still being displayed.
If something like this did happen I would find it difficult to believe this got accidentally introduced since it would take someone to actually program this into the code to be altered.
As I say, very unlikely to happen, but worth checking since things may look ok on the surface but underneath the site is actually telling Google to go away.
301 and 302 Redirects
This check partially follows on from checking the URL structure, since if something has been altered it is important to be using 301 redirects instead of 302 redirects. 301 redirects pass all of the Google Juice to your new pages, where as 302 redirects don’t.
It is also possible that during a website redesign that redirects could have been randomly introduced in the site. In Microsoft ASP and ASP.Net, the command ‘Response.Redirect()’ uses a 302 redirect by default which can cause a few issues. So if your site is being designed in either of those languages then this may be a thing to be aware of.
Mixed Case URLs
Generally mIxeD cAse URLs work on database driven websites which isn’t great for SEO since that is creating an awful lot of duplicate content for Google to hopefully handle correctly.
It can be useful to check all of the URLs on the website to see if they also work when replacing a lower case character with an upper case character. Personally I prefer to 301 all upper case URLs to their lower case versions to avoid any potential duplicate content where as showing a 404 page would also suffice.
Unique Meta Titles
It is quite possible during a website redesign that all of those fullyoptimised meta titles that you worked so hard to create have suddenly disappeared. Luckily you have kept a record of what they were (haven’t you?) so you don’t need to worry too much there. Best to check over all of the pages on the site to make sure some of your top performing pages haven’t accidentally lost their meta titles.
Canonical Tags
This is one of the areas where I have seen the most issues during a website redesign and an area I would pay most attention to when doing your SEO checks. One area where the canonical tag implementation can fail drastically is when a script in the background can be accessed viamultiple URLs, for example www.website.com/search?product=something and www.website.com/catalogue/something.
It is extremely important that this doesn’t get messed up since it can mean you are telling Google that the correct page is actually a copy of a page that is on a sloppy URL (such as a search URL) or worse, that it is a copy of a page that doesn’t actually exist.
Also keep an eye on what the correct version of the URL should be. Should it have a trailing slash or not? Whilst Google is pretty good at realising a URL with/without a trailing slash is ultimately the same content, I would still prefer to explicitly tell it so (or even 301 to the correct version).
I have seen it happen where the canonical was set incorrectly which happened to be a search URL, so the page still displayed the same content and luckily Google just began showing the search URL in the search results instead of the friendly URL. Whilst this ins’t great it is good to know that Google does handle this correctly without any negative impact. I would still prefer to get things right first time though.
One final thing to test with canonical tags is how the tag behaves when adding a parameter to the end of the URL which could be a page number such as ?page=2, although I will cover pagination in more detail later.
Google Analytics Implementation
Quite a simple check is this one, but if Google Analytics has been missed off during the website redesign then you aren’t going to be aware of other mistakes that may have happened either.
Boiler Plate Text
Another quick check, but it is important that large chunks of boiler plate text haven’t been randomly added throughout the website. I haven’t come across any times where this has happened but worth keeping an eye out for.
Hidden Text
It is a common technique to use ‘display:none’ then expand the section of text when someone clicks on a ‘view more’ link or similar. So one thing to watch out for is trying to limit the use of this where possible. It is a technique that Google are reasonably good at identifying when it is used for spam and when it is used for genuine purposes but personally I would aim to have things visible on the page both from an SEO point and a user experience point.
In addition hidden text can be found during a website redesign if there has been Multivariate Testing installed at the time. Since some MVT packages actually hide sections of the page and display them only to certain users then this is something to watch out for if using MVT.
Order of HTML
This is a bit of an old skool obvious thing to watch out for, but make sure that all of your important content is as high up in the HTML as possible. Don’t go filling the top of your HTML with crap, instead get all of yourmain content up there. It is possible to do clever CSS trickery by floating columns in a table left or right so that within the HTML the important items are at the top of the page but for the user the item is visually in a different area.
Font Styling
Since heading tags are designed for headings (no surprise there!) then you will find that it is quite common for developers to use them a lot which is great for the user. SEO wise though we want to be making sure that odd titles aren’t being wrapped in heading tags, such as “Look Here” in a H1. Instead we need to be making sure areas that need to look like a H1 are styled using CSS and not heading tags.
Internal Link Anchor Text
Quick run through the main pages on the site to ensure the internal anchor text hasn’t been drastically altered. We wouldn’t want to be telling Google that every page on the site is about ‘click here’.
External Links
Quick check for external links and to make sure they have the‘nofollow’ attribute on any links that you don’t want to pass any Google Juice.
AJAX and jQuery Implementations
Google has been indexing pages controlled by JavaScript for a while now, although I always prefer to make sure there is a clickable link in place so that Google can definitely find all the pages on the website. It is possible to mark up links so that a user with JavaScript turned on will still get the cool user experience and at the same time have a clickable link for when a user (or a search engine) doesn’t have JavaScript turned on.
IFrames
I have never come across a website that has found a good reason to be using iFrames so I don’t think this will happen much. But best to double check nothing has been put into iFrames (or normal frames for that matter) since Google finds it more difficult to stitch things together.
Duplicate Content
It is possible that duplicate content has been added as part of a website redesign so that more content is easily accessible for the user. SEO wise though we all know that duplicate content is a bad thing for Google. So always have a quick check for any possible pieces of content that have been duplicated across several pages.
Legacy Back Link Redirects
This is one of the areas that is often forgotten about during a website redesign since it is not something that is visible on the front end and often the redirects were put in place a long time ago and have been forgotten about.
Legacy back links can be a great source of getting additional Google Juice instead of funneling it all to a 404 page. So when the website is redesigned then it is important to be able to check that these redirects are still in place.
An example of where this is extremely important is if the whole websites URL structure changed at some point in the past as in the example earlier. If those redirects were forgotten to be carried across then you could potentially be loosing all of your Google Juice from links that got built up to your old URLs for the past X years.
Added Or Removed Links
Check to make sure no large chunks of links have either been added or removed from your key pages. It is possible that the new logic in the website can not put all of the link in places where they used to go. If this happened then you may find that a lot of your site is no longer crawlable. Whilst Google still knows of these links, it is like telling Google that those pages are not important any more.
Alt Attribute Text
This is a basic really and whilst some SEOs say that it is important and some say it isn’t. Personally I would rather put something in and it be ignored by Google than exclude something with the possibility that it may not be helping. Check to see if all important images have relevantALT attribute text, so not something like ‘Picture’.
Rich Snippets Markup
If you are using any of the Rich Snippets markup that Google offer then you will already know how long it can take before Google decide to pull their finger out and show them in the search results. So if you have got them in there already then please make sure you check they are correct before launching a new redesign of the page. If you lose them now then it may be several months until they reappear, if at all.
The same goes for the new authorship markup.
Paginated Content
A lot of larger websites have paginated content for product listings so check that all of the paginated pages are crawlable via a static link, check they are all indexable (ie, they aren’t ‘noindexed’) and check that their canonical tag has been implemented correctly. Too often the paginated pages can end up messing up the canonical tag implementation which will ultimately chop off a lot of pages from your site for Google.
In addition, the new “rel=next” and “rel=prev” markup from Google should be there. If it hasn’t been marked up yet, then what are you waiting for? If you have already marked this up then best to make sure it is still there.
Social Sharing Buttons
Ensure any social sharing buttons that were on the old site are still on the new website. Social is extremely important for SEO these days so it is important to make these buttons as prominent as possible.
Summary
I am sure there are a lot more site specific things to check when undergoing a site redesign, but above are some of the key areas I tend to focus on. I hope they are of some use to people going through the process and make sure to check any other items that you have developed previously.
Once you have put your brand new site live, then keep a close eye onGoogle Webmaster Tools to spot errors that may have been missed. Google Webmaster Tools can be a great source of fast information to identify problems, for example if you suddenly see a massive amount of URLs that are ‘restricted by robots.txt’ then the site may have been accidentally ‘noindexed’
5 thoughts on “SEO Checklist for Website Redesign”
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Wow, what a long article… unfortunately, nothing new. Same old guessing and nothing useful.
Nothing new in terms of solutions to Panda because the Panda algorithm is all about promoting the best websites to the top and pushing lower quality ones to the bottom. It’s as simple as that really.
All of the insights (not guessing) within this post have come from 12 months studying the impact of Panda, who has recovered, what they have done and what this means for everyone else. Along with running through Panda recoveries with websites I have been working on.
To recover from Panda is a long process and requires an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears. There is no silver bullet.
Hi,
I must appreciate the kind of time and effort you put in this post. I am an SEO company. I am also fighting Panda. I got success with service based and product based websites. But I am still struggling with affiliate sites. The think content problem.
The products are from health industry, and most of the information is already published on official websites and few other top sites. Nothing left to write new. I don’t understand how to deal with that situation. I can guess new kind of comparison, list of something or something like that… but seriously most of the stuff is already there.
Do need to have our own labs and do experiments and researches and then write new thing on website and then get ranks?? Seems Panda is anti-affiliate. Will you like to share your thoughts around it? Thanks in advance.
Hi Vinod,
Glad you found the Panda guide useful.
Sounds like you have your work cut out with helping your health client recover from Panda as an affiliate. I wouldn’t say Panda is anti-affiliate per-say, instead I believe Panda to be anti-no-value-affiliates. You have to ask yourself (or the client) the question about any affiliate websites, why is it there? What value does the affiliate website have over the main merchant.
If the affiliate really doesn’t add any value then why would Google rank an affiliate website (likely with no brand, little social activity and low quality or duplicate content – I’m generalising a little there mind!) above the main merchants website, would would arguably have more positive signals than the affiliate?
Affiliate marketing has had a good free ride for quite some time in Google’s search results, but in a post Panda world one has to ask why they are there at all.
For affiliate websites to succeed post Panda they need to really add value above and beyond what is already available from the merchant.
I hope that is of some use and good luck to recovering from the Google Panda update!
Michael
Phenomenal article! Ironically enough, this is the kind of content that Panda is designed to boost in the SERP’s
I didn’t create such an < modesty> awesome post < /modesty> for nothing ????
On a serious note though, glad you liked it!
Hope it is useful for you.
nice information, but not specific. Please tell me how I can recovery from Panda for my blog
Hi Frank,
I suggest re-reading the section about what websites Panda was targeting then take an honest look at your site. Compare this to some of the other review websites who are ranking top for your keywords.
Looking at your site for 30 seconds, it is pretty clear why your site may have been impacted. Just follow the Panda recovery steps outlined above and look at where you can truly add value to your website. Good luck and I hope you manage to recover from Panda.
What a post! Hey Mick, I have been hit by the 3.3 Panda Updated released the last Feb.27/2012, any idea how to recover from this one?
Hi John,
Regardless of which Panda update hit your site, the recovery plan is the same. Ultimately just look at ways to make your website better and add real value. How badly were you hit?
When public agency databases first came online in the mid-90’s we worked to find those databases and put them into a free directory to make them easy for people to find. We evaluated them, wrote a description of each that included helpful tips, and expanded it from a few dozen databases to now more than 55,000. When Google came along they made us #1 for “public records” (where we still stand) along with many other state, county, and local terms.
We developed innovative search tools, made the site so that you could search geographically or by type of public record, and worked tirelessly to make the site better and to add more databases.
Our reward was that hundreds of web sites copied us and since we’re just a small family-owned business we went into deep debt fighting them.
Then Panda came along a year ago and we got bludgeoned. Every state page dropped precipitously and every county page was blocked from appearing in Google’s results. We’ve lost 80% of our traffic and are now about to lose our business and our home– because of an algorithm.
Google says that they only punish bad sites– but their definition is tautological: If you’re bad you’ll be punished, and if you’re punished you must have been bad.
We’re a great site that provides a valuable service. We don’t deserve this and nothing we do to solve it has any impact at all.
Hi Tim,
I feel your pain. I can understand how your site has got caught up in the Panda algorithm, with aggregating data sets (i.e. no unique content) plus a lot of competitors doing the same thing. Unfortunately, many of the same signals are on low quality spam and scraper websites.
I sometimes get the feeling that Google is just trying to wipe out any kind of comparison / aggregator websites as they believe that is their job. Take their latest one within the travel industry, Google Hotel Finder – a direct attack on all of the large online travel agencies. Morally, is it really Google’s job to be the “comparison and answers engine”, or should it be there simply to provide a pointer towards who has the best answer for that query (opposed to answering the query their self within the search results)
There have been many stories of people going through true financial difficulty all down to this one ‘little’ algorithm change, some websites deserve to have been hit – others don’t and have simply got caught up in the net.
I do hope that things turn out for the best.
Out of interest, what have you tried so far which hasn’t helped recover from Panda?
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your understanding.
You’re not the first person to tell me that our content is “thin,” and that all that work to write helpful descriptions of each database may be helpful to people who are looking for information, but worthless for Google.
It’d take another week to list out all the changed we’ve made over the last year to recover from Panda. We’ve had expert advice and made hundreds of changes, yet nothing we do seems to have any effect. Send me an email and I’ll respond with the list.
– Tim
Most of the collected information in this post seems to be very much similar to every other posts I’ve seen that’s talking about this subject.
HOWEVER, I found that reading the various quotes at the bottom to be very inspirational. So I just wanted to say thank you for providing them.
Glad you found them useful