Google's Panda Update : The Basics Explained

Hi Everyone,
If you are looking for a guide to the recent Google Panda update (or Google Farmer update), then you are in the right place. We take you through what it is and how you can survive it. The Google Panda update is designed to improve the quality of user's search engine results by weeding out low quality sites. The update has recently been launched in the US and has affected about 12% of US searches, with the main losers being sites known as 'content farms'.

One of the main ways to survive the Google Panda update and boost your SEO is to make sure the vast majority of your content online is original. This is because sites with unoriginal or plagiarized content are much more likely to have their search engine results negatively affected by Panda. Also, if you have low quality content on your site, such as is found on many content farms, then even if you optimize the content for keywords, this will still have an impact and you'll move down the rankings.

The issue outlined above shows that as well as optimizing your website for keywords, you need to make sure all your content is well-written. Instead of tailoring your website for the search engine, tailor it for your web users as this means you'll be more likely to write relevant, useful webpages. Also keep your sentence structure natural and don't use too many keywords or else the search engine bots may become suspicious of your site and move it further down the rankings.

Some sites have had problems with Panda because they have set pages to go live before they have enough good content on them. This shows that you should always make sure pages are complete before posting them to lower the risk of your rankings dropping. This happens a lot on discussion posts that, until people comment on them, appear to be of low quality. Keep your site filled with fresh content so the search engine bots can see it's active.

Finally, you should be careful about how much advertising you have on your site. Of course, some advertising is fine and can actually help your SEO, as long as it is tailored to the site content and isn't overwhelming. If you have too much advertising, however, this can make your site appear to be of low quality, which then affects your search engine rankings thanks to the impact of the Google Panda update. In short, have a good website and you should be fine.