Post-Panda, How Will You Succeed?

[Will Edwards]

Well, I wanted to start by providing a little of my own observations on the current situation for internet marketers post-Panda. I have no inside information at all. All of this is simply my intuition. Take it for what it's worth.

Over the years, I have looked at many ways of getting better rankings for my site including all the stalwarts. However, before I decided to get involved in any of them, I would always ask myself the following question: if I were a search engine, how would I feel about this method? If I thought that Google would frown upon the method, whatever it happened to be, I stayed well away from it.

Like many people, I track a couple of sites against my own, just using Alexa. I understand the limitations of the service, but I don't manipulate the results and it provides me with a useful indication of how things are changing. There are two sites that I have been tracking against my own, in this way for years now.

One of these sites was always about double my traffic, the other was about five times my traffic. Since the Panda update, the traffic of the site that was double has fallen and my traffic has increased. I am not saying that Panda was the cause of this effect; just reporting an observation.

My thoughts are that every time there will be a major update in the Google algorithm in the future, my site will come out as one of the winners because my approach is to provide exactly what Google wants i.e. good quality, fresh, original, regularly updated content.

Think about this: if you were writing an algorithm update for Google, how would you beat internet marketers at their own game? Let's discuss why Google would want to beat internet marketers.

Here's what Google is trying to do when it updates its algorithm:

"Webspam is when websites try to cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate search engine quality guidelines." - Official Google Blog

So, if your tactics involve doing that i.e. what Google calls 'cheating' your way into higher positions, then that tactic, whatever it is, is ultimately doomed to failure because eventually, Google will figure out how to detect sites that are using the tactic.

Now seriously, try to put yourself into the shoes of a Google programmer – you don't have to know anything about programming, we can leave all of that to the techies. What we need to do is first, come up with ways of spotting sites that are 'cheating'.

If you have been around this game for a while, you should easily be able to come up with your own list. Google itself will tell you about some of these ways, but of course they won't tell you the whole picture. Why? It's obvious isn't it? Because they are trying to catch people and don't want to reveal their methods of detection.

So let's have a bit of fun together. Let's create a list of methods that Google might consider to be spam and then come up with ways that a search engine might be able to detect it. I think it might benefit a lot of people here. Of course, if you want to succeed in this game, post-Panda, you might pick up a lot of tips from this thread.

So, experienced marketers, are you up for that? OK, off you go; ask yourself ...

If I Were a Search Engine

Biddy biddy biddy bum ...

[IBank]

I got killed with the updates, lost my rankings and left the seo game.
If I had this mindset then that wouldn't have happened.

[x3xsolxdierx3x]

"....my approach is to provide exactly what Google wants i.e. good quality, fresh, original, regularly updated content."

...and, THIS is exactly what Google has told us it has wanted for years....

Slow, steady, growth is preferred and optimal....and, the sites (Web 2.0 and personal sites) that were hammered the hardest had a noticeable history of taking major short cuts...

[RayWhittaker]

Okay, so if I'm reading you right, the question is 'if I were a search engine, what would I do to weed out the spammers?'

I would incorporate a grammar checker into the ranking algorithm to deindex all those poorly spun articles that don't even make sense when you read them.

[Will Edwards]

Originally Posted by RayWhittaker

Okay, so if I'm reading you right, the question is 'if I were a search engine, what would I do to weed out the spammers?'

I would incorporate a grammar checker into the ranking algorithm to deindex all those poorly spun articles that don't even make sense when you read them.

There you go. Excellent idea. I wonder how long Google will take to implement that or indeed, are they doing it? Is it part of Panda? Of course, we don't really know but it really would not surprise me.

On their official blog they state their intention is to get rid of low value, spammy sites from the index.

Will

[junne]

exactly google follow a lot of techniques to slap spammy sites and always is improving in its algorithm by working on a lot of advanced techniques like LSI.

[davemiz]

i got DESTROYED in the last panda update... aug 12th.

i'm talking about de-indexed.

squeeze page on the homepage - blog in the back. Probably saw the squeeze and manually removed the site from G.

[j10nnb]

the last one seems to have put the nail in the coffin for a lot of my sites and they were mainly original content.

Also noticed in my own searching habits that google has recently not been bringing up the information I have been looking for, at least not on the first page. I have found myself more and more using Bing to find the information I want.

[JSProjects]

I'm not referring to this thread specifically, but there's been a lot of overblown panic since the Panda update. It all boils down to:

1. Doing the proper research before launching your site. Are your keywords / niche overly competitive? Nearly impossible to rank for? Dominated by sites with a huge SEO budget? If so, pass.

2. Make sure your content is high quality, 100% unique, and your on-page SEO is spot-on. Sounds easier than it is.

3. Are your backlinks strong and at least moderately legitimate? (IE, no profile or Scrapebox blasts directly to your main site. These are fine for lower tier backlinks / buffer pages though.)

Those 3 things are all you really need to follow to survive most any Google update. Properly researched keywords, perfect on-page SEO, and high quality backlinks pointing to your main site.

[JawadAshraf]

NEVER try to dodge search engines because you can't. Google is a very clever animal and change rapidly. Search engines asks you to give them fresh quality user friendly SEO optimized contents. Contents are just like their food. So, If you give them good fresh food (quality contents) they will be happy but if you give them bad food (spam sites) they will kick you ass. So give Google what they want and Google will give you money. That's it.

[yukon]

Weak pages in the SERPs before panda, will still be weak pages after panda.

Nothing has changed...

[trishseo]

Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x

"....my approach is to provide exactly what Google wants i.e. good quality, fresh, original, regularly updated content."

...and, THIS is exactly what Google has told us it has wanted for years....

Slow, steady, growth is preferred and optimal....and, the sites (Web 2.0 and personal sites) that were hammered the hardest had a noticeable history of taking major short cuts...

What Google wants and what Google does are different. It's all Wikipedia and about still so I don't know if I buy it.

It's more just about quality link building and social media now though. Don't reinvent the wheel.

[owenlee]

Originally Posted by yukon

Weak pages in the SERPs before panda, will still be weak pages after panda.

Nothing has changed...

what a good one!haha

[omy123]

I think after Panda.. The content of your website is very crucial.. You need to put on original and informative content..

[davemiz]

yukon, while sounding good, is certainly not true my friend.

we were ranking #6-11 for a term with 77 million pages... depending on the day/week..... along with many other kw's....

the site was de-indexed on aug 12 when they rolled out the newer panda update.

they dont want/like squeeze pages as your homepage. they want content.

just a heads up.

[rowanman28]

I'm glad to see so many people agreeing that the old spam tactics don't work anymore. I guess the answer is to keep posting long, high quality content in my blog. I get 200 unique views a day from Twitter, and maybe 20 views from Google. I've given up trying to understand it, I just write.

[Karlis]

I would add some kind of woting system where other people can vote against spammy sites, but their personal info would be wisible for people that check those pages.

[johnben1444]

More on Post Panda Link Building.

John

[paulgl]

If you are just now thinking post-panda.....where have you been?
Better still, where have you gone?

Paul

[davemiz]

good link john... thanks dude.

[vince04]

Originally Posted by x3xsolxdierx3x

".... (Web 2.0 and personal sites) that were hammered the hardest had a noticeable history of taking major short cuts...

Oh I got confused with this. So it means having web 2.0 personal sites that you can create your links is an effective tip on the Google panda?

[RayWhittaker]

Originally Posted by davemiz

i got DESTROYED in the last panda update... aug 12th.

i'm talking about de-indexed.

squeeze page on the homepage - blog in the back. Probably saw the squeeze and manually removed the site from G.

Google has never liked squeeze pages, even befor Panda. You can even get your adwords account suspended if you send prospects to squeeze pages.

It's usually better to lead with your blog and put the squeeze page behind it. There's no problem with having an optin form on every page though.

[RayWhittaker]

So Guys...

The original question that Will put to the forum was what would you do if you were in Google's place?

It's very easy to start griping about what Google does or doesn't do but they're just trying to provide the best experience for their users. It's nothing personal.

So maybe you don't like what Google does. Okay, so what would you do?

[RayWhittaker]

Originally Posted by Will Edwards

There you go. Excellent idea. I wonder how long Google will take to implement that or indeed, are they doing it? Is it part of Panda? Of course, we don't really know but it really would not surprise me.

On their official blog they state their intention is to get rid of low value, spammy sites from the index.

Will

There is talk that suggests they have implemented something like that. The badly spun sites are not doing as well. And I don't seem to be competing with badly spun versions of my own article so much now.

[Will Edwards]

OK Let me chuck an idea in.

If I were trying to detect search engine spamming, I would have a sliding scale that looks at the number and rate of the acquisition of forum profile links.

Very few genuine users would want to take part in more than a handful of different forums, so I would have a certain point of inflection (which I would tune over the course of time) for both parameters. If the number or rate of acquisition was detected as beyond that point, I would tag the pointed to site as suspect.

I would then have a second tier procedure that looked to correlate tagged sites with ownership of forum profiles. If there was a match, I would then set a flag.

Now, I have no idea how the Google algorithm works, but in this case I would still not tag the site pointed to as spamming. I would simply set a flag. I would then have a few dozen similar routines (maybe incorporating the grammar idea from Ray, for example) to the one described above and if I got more than X number of flags (again tunable), then I would identify the pointed to site as spamming.

Will

[mrehan]

There are certain EMD's I am tracking that are post panda ranking on 1st page of google which are half done or under construction Well they are not spammy but should they be ranked with hardly a few on no backlinks? But the common thing with these websites is that there are no affiliate links.

[Will Edwards]

Originally Posted by mrehan

There are certain EMD's I am tracking that are post panda ranking on 1st page of google which are half done or under construction Well they are not spammy but should they be ranked with hardly a few on no backlinks? But the common thing with these websites is that there are no affiliate links.

Again, a simple but probably very effective method when used as a factor within the whole algo.

Will

[outwest]

So you guys are saying sites with Affiliate links are getting slammed (were slammed on the 12th?)
Does affiliate links include Adsense?
if so you are saying Google targeted Adsense sites then?

Why are so many adsense sites unaffected if this is true

[Will Edwards]

Originally Posted by outwest

So you guys are saying sites with Affiliate links are getting slammed (were slammed on the 12th?)
Does affiliate links include Adsense?
if so you are saying Google targeted Adsense sites then?

Why are so many adsense sites unaffected if this is true

No - nobody is saying that.

A factor is a factor. Affiliate links may be a factor - enough to tip the balance in some cases - but not the whole thing by any means.

The purpose of this thread was for people to engage their brains, in the same way that the Google engineers must have done prior to writing code, to brainstorm possible factors that they may have included in the rewrite.

There have been several good suggestions above.

Will

[Tmill]

I am currently making a killing with my unique micro niche sites. Google wants quality now, not just backlinks.