The Google Panda update

[affiliate_marketer]

Hi,

I wanted to know what would be the best mix of backlinks that I should focus on as a result of the recent Panda update.

I'm looking to get page 1 or 2 google rankings for low to medium competition long tail keywords.

In addition to edu or gov links, should I have forum profile links, social bookmarks, blog links etc.? I know it's part speculation, are there any backlinks that will negatively affect the website rankings now but google was ok with them before? Are link wheels still recommended?

I read a post in the services sections of WF google might penalize certain types of links such as forum profile links or other links with low PR (less than PR3) but I think that it might be just a marketing strategy to sell a link service.

I was wondering what your thoughts on that are. Thank you.

[Miguelito203]

Originally Posted by affiliate_marketer

Hi,

I wanted to know what would be the best mix of backlinks that I should focus on as a result of the recent Panda update.

I'm looking to get page 1 or 2 google rankings for low to medium competition long tail keywords.

In addition to edu or gov links, should I have forum profile links, social bookmarks, blog links etc.? I know it's part speculation, are there any backlinks that will negatively affect the website rankings now but google was ok with them before? Are link wheels still recommended?

I read a post in the services sections of WF google might penalize certain types of links such as forum profile links or other links with low PR (less than PR3) but I think that it might be just a marketing strategy to sell a link service.

I was wondering what your thoughts on that are. Thank you.

From what I've heard, link wheels are a big no, no, easy for the search engines to spot, and can get your site sandboxed. One-way links work best. Also, Google is constantly tweaking it's algorithm. The Panda updates were just the big ones. Just focus on putting out unique, quality, up-to-date, content and offer value to the end user based on what he or she is searching for. It's the ultimate goal of any search engine. Get traffic from a variety of sources.

Good luck,
Joey

[tweetman]

Original content and well structured site is key. Most old SEO tricks are useless now.

[spoiledkid01]

Get anchor text backlinks from where ever you can. But the consistency of the links matters. As if your site is new and you blast 100 backlinks one week and 200 the other. You will rank first but the next week if you go low for example 50 backlinks than you are down hill. I am doing all the things exactly the same as 2 years before with same results. Nothing changes for me dunno why people lie about things.
There do come change in google alog but that is only about ON PAGE SEO nothing else.

[options]

Why would you want page 2 rankings ? no forum profile links no scapebox blasts no massive link building. Good High Quailty Links

[rosesmark]

If you have well website content and structure then you touch your goal

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by tweetman

Original content and well structured site is key. Most old SEO tricks are useless now.

You sure? Or just talking out loud?

Example 1: Number one result in Google for "Viagens Tailandia": JADE TRAVEL viagens para a Tailndia, viagem Tailndia - Check it for yourself: viagens tailandia - Google Search

Old SPAM Trick: Spamming the **** out of that URL.

Example 2: Depilação Definitiva | Fotodepilação| Luz Pulsada | RIO IPL8000 - Bying links publicly here: Seja afiliado: Ganhe dinheiro com a RIO IPL 8000! and yet it's number 1 in Google for their keyword: depilação - Google Search

Old SPAM Trick: Buying links.

------------

This is just in Google Portugal, I am sure you will find other Spammers ranking high with old tricks like these ones.

Wanna bet?

[options]

You know you could just go to the big G itself and type in google panda update.

Here is a little info

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: High-quality sites algorithm goes global, incorporates user feedback

[pearsonbrown]

MODERATOR

I'm fed up with all these repetitive Panda threads. Going to gather them all here.

Pearson

[lovboa]

The panda cleaned up the garbage. If your site was removed, it means the panda saw your site and thought it was garbage.

[jameskahon]

Originally Posted by tweetman

Original content and well structured site is key. Most old SEO tricks are useless now.

Somebody has spoken if behalf of the articles he read and not by personal experience by way of case studies.

If Panda is for quality sites then simply make a quality one.

[Dentist]

It seems nobody answered your question so here is my take on Panda:

Panda targeted mainly content farms meaning sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, EzineArticles and any other website that each page is an article about something. The problem Google had with these content farms was nay backlink coming from these pages have a high relevancy so before Panda they would be perceived as high quality backlink. Let's say for example your website was about practice marketing and then you had a spun article about practice marketing backlinked to your website, then it was enough for you to rank high for that keyword no matter what the competition was before Panda. Now if you set aside a few of these content farms like Squidoo the rest actually are filled with low quality content or spun content that people have submitted for backlinking purpose. Because Google algorithm gives a high weight to relevancy, Google had serious problem with these backlinks so what they did was to manually categorize thousands of content farms and devalue the importance of the backlinks coming from many of these websites. Some of these websites like Squidoo kept their importance. All that being said if before Panda an important part of your backlink building strategy was article marketing then you had to be hit by Panda update....

[David Ogden]

Dentist,
I like your explanation and now I can see why my own results have not suffered as I very rarely submit articles to the likes of EzineArticles and content farms but have used my own blogging strategy and classified advertising. I just work on the premise that could quality informational links helps sites rise to the top.

I believe far to many people get upset with changes of algorithms when things turn against them, what you need to do is to go back to basics and supply good content rich information which is what people are searching for.

[Lucas Becker]

Originally Posted by affiliate_marketer

Hi,

I wanted to know what would be the best mix of backlinks that I should focus on as a result of the recent Panda update.

I'm looking to get page 1 or 2 google rankings for low to medium competition long tail keywords.

In addition to edu or gov links, should I have forum profile links, social bookmarks, blog links etc.? I know it's part speculation, are there any backlinks that will negatively affect the website rankings now but google was ok with them before? Are link wheels still recommended?

I read a post in the services sections of WF google might penalize certain types of links such as forum profile links or other links with low PR (less than PR3) but I think that it might be just a marketing strategy to sell a link service.

I was wondering what your thoughts on that are. Thank you.

I always recommend this - Diversify your backlinks' sources as much as you can. That means, use any of the following sources:

Article directories
Web 2.0 (Squidoo, Jimdo, Wetpaint, etc.)
Signature links (try to change your anchor text on each forum)
Blog comments - I don't give a rat's tail if the links are NF or DF, both types work fine for me. You can find good blogs to comment on by appropriate search operators.
Press release directories - You can post your articles here the same way you do into article directories nad web 2.0 sites.

Last but not least, don't build only one tier of backlinks, backlink your first tier backlinks with lower quality ones, as well!

[JawadAshraf]

Just make high quality contents sites which solve the problems of users and Google will reward you. Just check this what I am talking about...

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by lovboa

The panda cleaned up the garbage. If your site was removed, it means the panda saw your site and thought it was garbage.

Please, give us a break and get informed. If I had a dollar for every post filler about Google and SEO I'd be rich by now.

Panda just crossed all lines of Google's integrity. They smashed thousands of sites just because webmasters had ONE site with "low quality" in their GWT or GAnalytics accounts.

Now, why in the world should 20 sites get smashed if only ONE of them was "low quality" in the eyes of Google?

Panda was the biggest mess and still is.

Oh and don't make me repeat myself with examples of trash/spam ranking high OR how big corporations got caught red handed spamming Google and just got a 30 or 60 days penalty to get back on #1.

Google is losing all it's (poor) integrity.

EDIT:

You folks should take a look at this thread: Can you contact Google directly and ask for "mercy?"

This warrior is suffering from what I am explaining above: all his sites got demolished. ALL OF THEM. Including the good ones.

This is pure EVIL from Google.

They should get a lawsuit - and don't bring me the crap of "use another SE..." - thats the lamest answer for a big problem, even the authorities are tracking this **** to see if Google is abusing their dominant position or not.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Dentist

It seems nobody answered your question so here is my take on Panda:

Panda targeted mainly content farms meaning sites like Squidoo, Hubpages, EzineArticles and any other website that each page is an article about something. The problem Google had with these content farms was nay backlink coming from these pages have a high relevancy so before Panda they would be perceived as high quality backlink. Let's say for example your website was about practice marketing and then you had a spun article about practice marketing backlinked to your website, then it was enough for you to rank high for that keyword no matter what the competition was before Panda. Now if you set aside a few of these content farms like Squidoo the rest actually are filled with low quality content or spun content that people have submitted for backlinking purpose. Because Google algorithm gives a high weight to relevancy, Google had serious problem with these backlinks so what they did was to manually categorize thousands of content farms and devalue the importance of the backlinks coming from many of these websites. Some of these websites like Squidoo kept their importance. All that being said if before Panda an important part of your backlink building strategy was article marketing then you had to be hit by Panda update....

Hi Dentist,

I disagree with your characterization of the Panda update. It just seems factually inaccurate to me. I never heard from any credible source that "what they did was to manually categorize thousands of content farms and devalue the link juice of the backlinks coming from many of these websites". The fact is that many articles on those very websites continue to rank very highly in SERPs.

From what I have learned about the Panda series of updates is that Google, for the first time, has begun to assign a quality score to pages within their index. Google spokesmen and engineers have publicly warned webmasters for several years about quality issues and originality of the content on websites. After working on algorithms that check for quality issues in content they finally began rolling them out this year as the Panda updates.

The Panda series of updates seems to act like a weighting factor that lowers the relevancy scores of each page with low quality content. It also seems to lower the value of outbound links from low quality pages. So if you have a website, that has a lot of pages with low quality content, the link juice that passed through your internal links have been devalued. Similarly, if you were receiving a lot of link juice from backlinks on pages that contain low quality content, that backlink juice is now reduced.

If you have pages that contain low quality content, or you rely on link juice from pages with low quality content the Panda Update had an effect on your rankings. I have seen no evidence that the Panda Updates targeted specific websites, just specific content with low quality levels. If Panda effected an entire website, then the entire website was relying on low quality content before the update.

Also, whether content is spun, or not, doesn't seem a cause. With rare exception, there is no such thing as non spun content. Virtually all content is spun, either by software or the creator's brain. If the spun content is high quality it remains unaffected by Panda. If content is low quality, regardless of the use of spinning software program in the creation, or not, Panda will impact it.

It seems to me that many folks are failing to understand exactly what Google considers quality content. Generally speaking, quality means being free from defect. Poor grammar, bad spelling, excessive use of passive voice, poor layout choices, and similar content issues all seem to act as triggers for low quality scoring in the Panda update. Yet we rarely see threads here on this forum that discuss Panda in this context. Why do so many people seem to not get it?

[gtk29]

With the latest Google Panda, all you can do is put original useful content and make your site easy to navigate.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by gtk29

With the latest Google Panda, all you can do is put original useful content and make your site easy to navigate.

Hi gtk29,

That is good pre-Panda advice. However, Panda addresses a completely different issue, which is content quality. It doesn't matter much how original and useful your content is now, if it isn't free from quality defects it will be dinged by the Panda update.

[Dentist]

Hi,

I agree with some of what you said and have to disagree with some. First of all Quality is not a new thing in SEO world. If you think about it on-page SEO is about rules that represent quality regarding a specific keyword. And also if you think about it even PR is some representation of Quality. So having a new "quality" label doesn't change the SEO concepts that have been there. BTW, not every website has content quality for example it doesn't matter if people post low quality content in Digg or Facebook because the application of those websites is different and there are zillions of different applications on the web. Panda is an ongoing effort but as far as I understand it and could read, the first updates are toward getting rid of low quality content farms. For that Google had to define content farms (whether manually or automatic) which a lot of that is applied to backlinks from article marketing. And they lowered the value of backlinks from those resources compared to other types of backlinks compared to before Panda. Now, nobody said article marketing doesn't work anymore. I use it myself and it works. It just tends to be less effective compared to what it used to be. Again in my example if you had all of your strategy coming from article marketing which a lot of that can be categorized in low quality content (while some of that can't) and your competitors had backlinks from all types of sources, then the chances are you had been hit by Panda update meaning worse SERP but not zero SERP.

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Dentist,

I disagree with your characterization of the Panda update. It just seems factually inaccurate to me. I never heard from any credible source that "what they did was to manually categorize thousands of content farms and devalue the link juice of the backlinks coming from many of these websites". The fact is that many articles on those very websites continue to rank very highly in SERPs.

From what I have learned about the Panda series of updates is that Google, for the first time, has begun to assign a quality score to pages within their index. Google spokesmen and engineers have publicly warned webmasters for several years about quality issues and originality of the content on websites. After working on algorithms that check for quality issues in content they finally began rolling them out this year as the Panda updates.

The Panda series of updates seems to act like a weighting factor that lowers the relevancy scores of each page with low quality content. It also seems to lower the value of outbound links from low quality pages. So if you have a website, that has a lot of pages with low quality content, the link juice that passed through your internal links have been devalued. Similarly, if you were receiving a lot of link juice from backlinks on pages that contain low quality content, that backlink juice is now reduced.

If you have pages that contain low quality content, or you rely on link juice from pages with low quality content the Panda Update had an effect on your rankings. I have seen no evidence that the Panda Updates targeted specific websites, just specific content with low quality levels. If Panda effected an entire website, then the entire website was relying on low quality content before the update.

Also, whether content is spun, or not, doesn't seem a cause. With rare exception, there is no such thing as non spun content. Virtually all content is spun, either by software or the creator's brain. If the spun content is high quality it remains unaffected by Panda. If content is low quality, regardless of the use of spinning software program in the creation, or not, Panda will impact it.

It seems to me that many folks are failing to understand exactly what Google considers quality content. Generally speaking, quality means being free from defect. Poor grammar, bad spelling, excessive use of passive voice, poor layout choices, and similar content issues all seem to act as triggers for low quality scoring in the Panda update. Yet we rarely see threads here on this forum that discuss Panda in this context. Why do so many people seem to not get it?

[cbpayne]

Originally Posted by affiliate_marketer

I wanted to know what would be the best mix of backlinks that I should focus on as a result of the recent Panda update. .

The panda algorithm has nothing to do with links. Its all about on-page content.

[Dentist]

With all due respect you are absolutely wrong. When it comes to Google and algorithm and quality it is a unified picture. It means whether if you have a low quality content website (in this case content farm) or you get backlinks from a website like that you will be affected. It is just common sense. If you are a website flagged with low quality you will be affected yourself and also everybody that you linked to will be affected (you have less voting power)

Originally Posted by cbpayne

The panda algorithm has nothing to do with links. Its all about on-page content.

[cbpayne]

Originally Posted by Dentist

With all due respect you are absolutely wrong.)

Me thinks you need to go away and read about the Panda algorithm before you accuse me about that. The Panda algorithm is run periodically (5 times so far) to give each site a 'content' score. This score (like the PR score and many others) are then factored in with the >200 or so other factors by the main ranking algorithm. The Panda algorithm has nothing to do with links.

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso

Please, give us a break and get informed. If I had a dollar for every post filler about Google and SEO I'd be rich by now.

Panda just crossed all lines of Google's integrity. They smashed thousands of sites just because webmasters had ONE site with "low quality" in their GWT or GAnalytics accounts.

Now, why in the world should 20 sites get smashed if only ONE of them was "low quality" in the eyes of Google?

Panda was the biggest mess and still is.

Oh and don't make me repeat myself with examples of trash/spam ranking high OR how big corporations got caught red handed spamming Google and just got a 30 or 60 days penalty to get back on #1.

Google is losing all it's (poor) integrity.

EDIT:

You folks should take a look at this thread: Can you contact Google directly and ask for "mercy?"

This warrior is suffering from what I am explaining above: all his sites got demolished. ALL OF THEM. Including the good ones.

This is pure EVIL from Google.

They should get a lawsuit - and don't bring me the crap of "use another SE..." - thats the lamest answer for a big problem, even the authorities are tracking this **** to see if Google is abusing their dominant position or not.

At the moment I am too lazy to go and find the article, but I do know that Google has several anti-trust law suits pending against it, several of which are in the UK I believe. And lots of corporations in the US have their eyes on Google as well. And yes, it involves "fudging" the results for their own gains.

-- Jeff

[cbpayne]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

At the moment I am too lazy to go and find the article, but I do know that Google has several anti-trust law suits pending against it, several of which are in the UK I believe. And lots of corporations in the US have their eyes on Google as well. And yes, it involves "fudging" the results for their own gains.

BUT, all those "investigations" are related to antitrust issues and does not mean they will go anywhere. They also have nothing to do with the panda update or the organic rankings.

[Mainze]

Read the Google Webmaster guidelines, nobody on here has a clue is the answer.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Dentist

Hi,

I agree with some of what you said and have to disagree with some. First of all Quality is not a new thing in SEO world. If you think about it on-page SEO is about rules that represent quality regarding a specific keyword. And also if you think about it even PR is some representation of Quality. So having a new "quality" label doesn't change the SEO concepts that have been there. BTW, not every website has content quality for example it doesn't matter if people post low quality content in Digg or Facebook because the application of those websites is different and there are zillions of different applications on the web. Panda is an ongoing effort but as far as I understand it and could read, the first updates are toward getting rid of low quality content farms. For that Google had to define content farms (whether manually or automatic) which a lot of that is applied to backlinks from article marketing. And they lowered the value of backlinks from those resources compared to other types of backlinks compared to before Panda. Now, nobody said article marketing doesn't work anymore. I use it myself and it works. It just tends to be less effective compared to what it used to be. Again in my example if you had all of your strategy coming from article marketing which a lot of that can be categorized in low quality content (while some of that can't) and your competitors had backlinks from all types of sources, then the chances are you had been hit by Panda update meaning worse SERP but not zero SERP.

Hi Dentist,

I disagree, they did not have to define "content farms", but they did have to define "low quality", else how would they know that a particular "content farm" had "low quality" content? Once they defined low quality, why in the world would the want to restrict that algorithm to content farms only? The fact is they didn't.

The only content effected was low quality content and no content farms were effected except those with low quality content and the effect was limited to the low quality content and any rankings that relied on that same low quality content.

Of course observers noticed that the content farms that hosted lots of low quality content were effected, by having much of that low quality content removed from SERP. But it was just speculation that Google had singled out certain websites to effect. In time folks began to realized that it wasn't just content farms that were affected, it was just widely noticed in certain websites in the beginning.

If you study the effects of the Panda Update you will see that there never was a restriction to just certain websites. It was always targeting every website that contained low quality content. Yes, that includes low quality content on Facebook, Digg and many other popular websites.

[addison.agnote]

Originally Posted by tweetman

Original content and well structured site is key. Most old SEO tricks are useless now.

That's true. The quality of your content is vital in optimizing your website. Most old SEO tricks are considered as junks now, they are not helpful anymore and would only hurt your rankings.

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by cbpayne

BUT, all those "investigations" are related to antitrust issues and does not mean they will go anywhere. They also have nothing to do with the panda update or the organic rankings.

Everytime a Google update kills their own guidelines (Panda did this to thousands of guys following/preaching them) you can bet there is material to a antitrust case.

Then you have the JCPennies's and the likes with HUGE Adwords budgets caught redhanded spamming Google and JUST getting a 60 days penalty - and now they're back to happy #1. This is getting outrageous, yet some of you people, due to your ignorance, think it's all good.



What a cool world.

[Fernando Veloso]

Originally Posted by addison.agnote

That's true. The quality of your content is vital in optimizing your website. Most old SEO tricks are considered as junks now, they are not helpful anymore and would only hurt your rankings.

Guess you just posted to raise your post count cause I provided 2 live examples in post #7 in this thread. But as usual, people post, comment, talk, and have no clue.

The ignorance is taking over. God help us.

[Ferenc Makar]

Why does Google continually make all these updates? SEO takes a lot of link building and unique content creation. Non-unique content no longer shares its place in the rankings. Trying to figure this whole SEO thing out is tiring. ...The whole point is to keep practicing, and never losing heart...

[Steven Miranda]

Google has said they change their algo. about 2 times per day. Sorry but even though it may be a lot of guessing and frustrating it is not their problem. Google is in the business of proving the best search results for its users. Even though I am in SEO , most of it is trying to manipulate search results - something Google does not like.

[Royalking]

Google is a user driven search engine and for google to survive and keep generating revenue it has to provide good user experience so they are taking measures to remove low quality sites.
This will help them retain users and they come back again only if they get quality result for their query.

[Dentist]

I agree. I think it makes sense but it doesn't contradict what I said. It's a broader sense to the same concept. Nevertheless, I specifically read about content farms and their samples a couple of times which as you said can be the by-product of a broader algorithm. Then again Panda is an ongoing effort and they may target something else tomorrow. I know that everybody talks about content quality now which is a given but to me one of the applications of Panda for SEO guys is to have a diverse backlinking strategy.

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Dentist,

I disagree, they did not have to define "content farms", but they did have to define "low quality", else how would they know that a particular "content farm" had "low quality" content? Once they defined low quality, why in the world would the want to restrict that algorithm to content farms only? The fact is they didn't.

The only content effected was low quality content and no content farms were effected except those with low quality content and the effect was limited to the low quality content and any rankings that relied on that same low quality content.

Of course observers noticed that the content farms that hosted lots of low quality content were effected, by having much of that low quality content removed from SERP. But it was just speculation that Google had singled out certain websites to effect. In time folks began to realized that it wasn't just content farms that were affected, it was just widely noticed in certain websites in the beginning.

If you study the effects of the Panda Update you will see that there never was a restriction to just certain websites. It was always targeting every website that contained low quality content. Yes, that includes low quality content on Facebook, Digg and many other popular websites.