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New Panda tweek

jcdean
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New Panda tweek

Read about the newest tweek to Panda, at the official Google webmaster blog.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. ... ality.html

Just my take, Google is getting better at reading content and links are becoming less and less important.
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JC Dean
 
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michellerana
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Thanks for sharing this info, JC :)

I'm very happy to hear that Google is focusing their efforts in promoting high quality content. Now, those who are making sites for users will see their effort rewarded. :)

All the best!
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jcdean
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I suspect that google tracks information about how people act when they visit your site.

-how long they stay
-do they scroll down
-click through to other pages
-click off or hit the back space
-weather they bookmark or share your site before leaving.

Alot of people who are surfing the web are signed into google in one way of the other, so Google knows what the searchers like and don't like.

I also think in the future the only links that will have SEO value are links that actually get impressions on Google and are actually clicked by people to get to your site.

Rereading the blog post it looks as if the rules on keyword density are changing and over use of the key work may actually hurt your ranking.

The web will belong to true bloggers soon.
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JC Dean
 
esolutions
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It will be interesting to see if this actually improves search results.

I have been conducting a test with a site since last year when they announced that they would be focusing more on quality and so far, it's only continued down in the rankings. If they're actually going to award high quality sites, then please do so. Just don't tell us one thing and do another.
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jmpruitt
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based on the comments I saw on the post, it is not looking good. but then, my rankings mostly went up so I am not complaining.
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gradyp
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I think you may be right, JC, because my site where I've been getting a higher bounce rate was definitely more affected. Though I still don't have my traffic up where I want it, I'm beginning to look to see if I can figure out what can help the bounce rate on that site. James gave me one idea that, while still too early to tell, may help. Then again, some of the changes may reflect that I'm getting fewer tire kickers and starting to get more "return visitors" now that I'm posting regularly again and interacting with other people. For me, at least, it's still too early to tell the effect the latest tweak will have on my site.
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braumab
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i can already see changes...my sites are full in quality and while they have backlinks, I haven't taken the time to buff a few of them up ... but so far it isn't all that needed because they are sky rocketing in the rankings. It's crazy!
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maryt
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While I am reading the article, I was thinking "now every one is back to basics". I think that this change will also bring a lot of changes to the way SEO (white or black hat) works.

Essentially, with the on-going changes where everyone is uncertain of "what" really works to remain on top of the rankings, is it safe to say that we focus getting more traffic to social media sites (aside of course from producing quality content) rather than find out what to do with our SEO tactics? Really, with these changes, it will affect a lot of things like there will be "automated" tools that will be useless because of these changes.
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esolutions
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gradyp wrote:I think you may be right, JC, because my site where I've been getting a higher bounce rate was definitely more affected. Though I still don't have my traffic up where I want it, I'm beginning to look to see if I can figure out what can help the bounce rate on that site. James gave me one idea that, while still too early to tell, may help. Then again, some of the changes may reflect that I'm getting fewer tire kickers and starting to get more "return visitors" now that I'm posting regularly again and interacting with other people. For me, at least, it's still too early to tell the effect the latest tweak will have on my site.




The biggest tire kicker ever!

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easyrider
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Matt Cutts: 'And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”'

So does this mean that we should have a small header and very wide page???
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Greg
 
burkhardt5
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Thanks JC

This explains alot.

I almost cried when I saw my traffic collapse the other day.

I was averaging 60+ visitors per day untill 4/25/12 when it dropped down to 14 and then down to 10 on 4/26/12.

I found out that I dropped from #1 on google to #2 for my main 2 keywords. But that was just the beginning, I found that I dropped for other keywords also going from the top three down to page 2 or worse.

After I calmed myself down I looked for a reason and found this article http://www.webpronews.com/webspam-and-panda-updates-does-seo-still-matter-2012-04 .

From what I gather these changes might be drastic at first but will come to a happy medium after a while so i'm not going back to the keyboard just yet. It is boiling down to quality content (as we know) but I think that they are looking for even higher quality than we might think.

As JC said, the google stats should make a BIG difference in a sites ranking. I already took down my above the fold ad on my homepage a week ago to drop my bounce rate which went from 67% down to 50%.

I think that shear size of a site ( with very high quality content ) will help the individual pages rank well as a whole and not just treating each page as its own entity.

Anyway, I think this change will help us overall as we will have more control since the on-page S.E.O. content quality will make a bigger difference and we might not need to do as much link building.

Not sure but maybe.

Never Give Up!!!
Paul
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Paul J. Burkhardt
 
esolutions
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Hi,

The above the fold penalty was to get rid of sites that consisted mostly of ads, not so that you don't have any ads above the fold. It's good to rank, but if you get rid of your ads, then what's the point?

Same thing with this new change, it's going after excessively spammy keyword stuffing, etc. When trying to please Google begins destroying your profits then it may be time to find new traffic sources.
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easyrider
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Today I have just discovered that I have been hit hard by these changes. I had a look at the new #1 for one of the biggest keywords I have been targeting and found that it is a press release with zero PR that uses spun content and offers very little value to the user.

What is more, they do just about everything possible to stop you leaving the page. Meanwhile I have spent many hours trying to create a great user experience as Google preaches and I disappear from the rankings for that keyword almost completely.

I am disappointed and angry with Google ... They are full of ****.
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Greg
 
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gradyp
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I have seen my stats drop from 50 to 20 a day as well. But I'm pressing forward. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing already, which is blog commenting and forum posting, and add a couple of more things with videos and guest posting.

We all need to remember that the whole point of doing SEO is to bring traffic to our site. If we work on the article marketing, the guest posting, the blog commenting, creating videos, and the like, our rankings will go up, and even if they don't, if they bring DIRECT traffic to our site... Isn't that what we're after? Focus on the traffic and the rankings will come. And if the rankings don't... Well, if you getting the traffic anyway, then no big deal!

So think "What can I do today that can improve my SEO while bringing me direct traffic?" Jot some note down. Then take action on your ideas.

(Just a quick note here, I'm using "direct traffic" differently than Google Analytics does... by direct traffic, I mean that they go from the article, guest post, forum post, profile link, blog comment, or video -- or wherever they are -- to your site.)

Good luck!
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maryt
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There are so much happening lately with Google's updates and individual's traffic situation. Although this "change" from Google is nothing new to all of us, still we are caught up by surprise. This is because most of use highly depend on how we can "outsmart" Google.

While I feel the same frustration and desperation on how to bring traffic back (as I also have one blog suffering from a major drop since G released its new algo), I suppose the best thing to do is to accept this change and reconstruct how we do our link building and SEO.
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easyrider
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It's just a game of cat and mouse really. Once we figure out what the new algorithm likes and doesn't like, we will respond accordingly.

Since what is "quality content" is subjective, there is no way that Google will ever be able to identify it directly. All it can use are proxy indicators to try to sort the quality from the crap. And all of these indicators can be manipulated in some way or other.

If article length is a determinant, marketers will just write really long articles (or splice articles together). If social interaction is a determinant, marketers will pay for social votes (eg. Fiverr gigs). If having grammatically correct perfect English is major requirement, marketers will pay professional writers to proof-read their material. If the amount of content above the fold is important, marketers will have extremely wide webpages or use coding tricks to fool Google ....

Long term though Google is only going to hurt itself by doing these major updates and killing many people's online businesses overnight. If Internet Marketers haven't got enough confidence that if they create great content they will get it ranked and keep it ranked, they won't go to the trouble of creating the content in the first place. Many marketers will drop out and "get a real job". Others will instead create very small sales page type websites will no free content and then use other means like social media and different forms of paid traffic to get people to their sites.

As a result there won't be very much quality free content available on the web and this will result in people using Google a lot less - because they don't have a great experience when doing so.

The bottom line is that Google will reap what it sows. No one is big enough that they are untouchable ... no one.
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Greg
 
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maryt
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Hi Greg,

There is so much to digest on what you just said. I must agree that Google cannot play God (not forever). Although it hurts a lot to be back at the bottom and start everything all over again, it will be just a matter of time before everyone figured out how to get on top pages of Google again.

It will be interesting though on which businesses will survive and which ones won't. With better Panda released, is it possible that there are niches that won't survive the change? Additionally, Google firmly holds that quality sites would mean sites that have informative and helpful content. So what about businesses or sites that are not really into providing "content"?
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easyrider
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I think that these changes are going to make it much harder to operate as an affiliate. When you are an affiliate it is more difficult to get paid traffic without getting slapped (especially if you are in a niche that is considered "spammy", such as dating/relationships niches which I am in). Also, when you are just an affiliate it is hard to get other sites to promote yours, do JVs etc. This means that the alternatives to search engine traffic are few (although there are still some).
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Greg
 
burkhardt5
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Great replies everyone!

My main site has completely crashed in the S.E. rankings since the penguin update. So I have been reading alot of articles about this new update and this is what I have found.

It seems that this update has really screwed up and is not doing at all what it was supposed to do. It was estimated that only about 1% of search results would be effected. It turns out that nearly 9% have been effected and many top notch sites have been killed while many garbage sites have gone to the top.

It's my hunch that google will not leave things as they are and rethink this change.

The penguin update was supposed to identify and reward quality sites and punish "Black Hat" or " Webspam" sites when in reality it is rewarding authority and brand "powerhouse" sites and killing smaller sites (less than 10 pages ) just because they are small.

Now brands, they are really dominating. They started to really dominate the rankings after the first few Google updates last October. But now; they’ve taken over. If you Google a review on any kind of physical product, 90% of the time the first two pages will be full of brands.

Big brand review sites like Epinions and Viewpoint for example. No longer are there many independent review sites built by Internet Marketers. That side of Internet Marketing appears to be very much screwed right now.


Brands and massive authority sites are dominating. Little niche sites have been mostly wiped out and some authority sites are still ranking. But the majority of all niche sites have lost a substantial percentage of their traffic.

Overall it’s not a great time to be doing SEO unless you’re a brand or gigantic site. I honestly think people should lay low for a little while and focus on other traffic generation strategies. Most importantly I believe it’s time to dive into paid traffic.


As far as google penguins real clean-up efforts, they are cracking down big time on keyword stuffing ( going for more than 5 keywords on any 1 post). Link schemes (link wheels,blog networks, buying or selling links,etc.). Cloaking (mostly keyword cloaking), “sneaky” redirects or “doorway” pages but not legit 301 redirects. And of course duplicate content.

Some of the articles are pushing a new age of PPC and PPV as being the best way to stabilize regular traffic (if you have the money and expertise to do it). Others are hoping that things will go back to they way they were (not likely) and some people are saying that we need to start from scratch with new sites that have to be huge authority sites in order to rank well.

In a nut shell the over-all opinion is to keep your sites very clean cut and don't use any kind of link building strategy or schemes or networks, just write super high quality content with less than 1% keyword density (even as low as .2% or so, just title and 1 or 2 other times) and hope that it is good enough to get you good rankings with a solid link platform.

There are bound to be more of these google updates in the future so we might as well do everything absolutely perfect from now on. If you site has been effected by penguin like mine has, we just have to wait and see what will happen, I have stopped everything for now until I learn more.

Sorry that this got a little long winded but I wanted to share what I have read.

Never Give Up!!!
Paul
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Paul J. Burkhardt
 
easyrider
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You can't not do any link building, otherwise you will never get your site ranked in the first place.

"The biggest risk is not to take a risk"

It might be a good idea to focus on social signals (especially Facebook likes, Twitter Tweets and Google +1s) instead of traditional link building. When I have time, I am probably going to start building up a portfolio of fake social accounts and use these to vote for my money sites.
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Greg
 
burkhardt5
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I'm sorry, I did not phrase that part well. What I mean is, not to build links in any type of fishy of questionable way. Keep your link building on the up and up, no blog networks, wheels or spammy typs of link building.

Sorry if that came across wrong.

Never Give Up!!!
Paul
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Paul J. Burkhardt
 
easyrider
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Any type of active link building would be against Google standards. They expect you to create your content and then wait for others to link to you.
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Greg
 
vikassingal2002
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This 24th April update is Called New Penguin Update...it has effected around 3% query in total...
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quadxnet
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Its important to make everything you do as natural as possible. Even if you are not manually creating links it needs to look like everything is manual. If someone is linking to your site about red shoes whats the chances that website owner is going to use the anchor text "red shoes"? Not likely. They are probably going to link to it by saying: "check it out here" or something similar. So if all of your links are for your keyword thats a red flag. Stuff as simple as this can tip off Google.

As for the bounce rate - Videos are a great way to keep visitors on your site. I'm trying to incorporate more videos whenever I can.
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mark schaaf
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I haven't been affected at all by either of the google updates and believe it is because I have high quality articles with a lot of information. I am on page 1 and 2 for many keyword phrases but I still look to see what the sites are like that are in front of me and there are still sites that are crap there without much to offer.

On the other hand what in the world is google going to do about sites from companies that make certain types of products. I mean if I made nuts and bolts what the hell do they think I am supposed to put on my site. Should I put articles about how to use nuts and bolts and how to figure out which nuts and bolts are going to be best for my use.

If that is what google wants that would be stupid, People looking for something like that on the internet already know what they want and just want to buy and they want a page that they can just say I want to buy 100 9/16th nuts and bolts. I have never thought google has done a good job of putting the best sites up first.

Even thought my main site is doing well in SERP's I still don't get the traffic I think I should be getting for where I am. I use to think I knew what people wanted because I put my site together based on what I wanted when I was looking for the type of information I now provide but anymore I think I don't have a clue and that google is putting me on page one for real off beat things that I am not trying to rank for at all.

But I just cant give up I spent far too much time and energy putting this thing together. My other problem is that I want to branch out into some other areas to try and make more money but don't have any idea of where to look and what niche to get into next. Mark
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Mark
 
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maryt
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That is the spirit Mark :)

Google could very well generate traffic to your site, but if you really want to get your product out there, you can use social media sites. Are you referring to your travel site? If so, I believe you can get real visitors from social media sites. Try to read more about how to effectively promote your travel site. There are tons of blogs and resources about promoting to social media sites and they can work well with your travel site.

Good luck!
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jimcoe
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Hey Mark,

I'm wondering if there's some way you could get some credibility elements onto your pages?

Maybe testimonials from travelers who have used your site? Maybe your number of trips or a map with "pins" of the spots you've visited? Or some travel association or other membership emblems? Or Italian city or region medallions?

Cheers!
_jim coe
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maryt
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jimcoe wrote:Hey Mark,

I'm wondering if there's some way you could get some credibility elements onto your pages?

Maybe testimonials from travelers who have used your site? Maybe your number of trips or a map with "pins" of the spots you've visited? Or some travel association or other membership emblems? Or Italian city or region medallions?

Cheers!
_jim coe



Great suggestion Jim. :)

The idea is to get your visitors excited. And the way to do this is to have good graphics, a lot of "credible" pictures and of course some wonderful comments from travelers. :)

How do you think Pinterest made it to where it is now (in just little time?)--- good-looking pictures-> good looking in a sense that you wish they are yours :) I have started pinning a lot of pictures there and I'm getting addicted. :)

You could somehow make than happen to your travel site.

Mary
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