Best SEO Tips to Survive Google Panda Update

Google’s latest update to its search engine ranking algorithm, codenamed Panda Farmer, made some drastic changes to the key factors responsible for providing high-quality and relevant search results.

Although Google Panda was only meant to filter low-quality spam websites, many legitimate websites and blogs have been penalized and have lost a large portion of their organic traffic. If you are one of the victims of collateral damage caused by the update, here are some of the best tips for surviving the Google Panda update:

Find and remove duplicate content.

This should be a priority, check the content of your websites, find all duplicate content and get rid of it soon. Not only content copied from third-party websites, but also content used on various pages of your website.

You may not have added duplicate content from third-party websites, but it could be user-generated content in the form of comments or guest posts. Identifying plagiarism is easier than ever thanks to tools like copyscape.com and plagiarismchecker.com

Arranging content used on multiple pages of your website is easier than you think, all you need is to add a canonical tag in your HTML header. A canonical link element notifies search engine crawlers that, among multiple duplicate pages, a “favorite” page is found at a particular URL, and prompts them to index it instead of other pages. If you are using any of the major CMS like WordPress or Joomla, this will just require installing any of the many SEO plugins available for free download.

Choose quality over quantity, always.

Google has made it quite clear in their guidelines that websites should be built for readers, not search engines. You may have been able to get to the top positions using mediocre content and keyword stuffing, but it will no longer be entertaining. Stop responding about methods like automated content generation using bots or outsourcing to cheap writers who don’t even know what they’re talking about.

As a webmaster, take note to provide informative and relevant content to your visitors and stop worrying about keyword count or the number of articles you can get for your money. If your website is about custom auto parts, stop posting about something that doesn’t appeal to your niche just to promote a sponsored link or spread links to your new venture. Links from irrelevant websites will do no good for SEO anyway.

By maintaining a strict quality standard for the articles you publish, you not only increase your chances of getting higher search engine rankings, but also help you build an audience on social media.

Get social, at least online.

I know webmasters aren’t exactly what you’d call a social creature, most of us would prefer a computer screen to interacting with people. But then, if you want your website to be successful, you need to engage with your audience, start a discussion, answer their questions, and most of all, allow them to join your social networks. Highlight links to your fan pages and add buttons to share your links on social media.

Being active on social media and discussion forums will not only open new doors of traffic to your website, but will also increase your reputation as a quality website.

Inbound links from Google+, Facebook, or Twitter circles will prevent Google’s algorithm from marking your website as a low-quality resource. The logic behind this is that if your content is good enough, readers would have shared it on social media or linked from other high-quality websites. But don’t try to beat the system by spamming your links on social media, spam will be filtered by social media and by Google.

Now that you know what to do, get to work and fix the problems before it’s too late.