Post-Panda SEO: Content is King and Community is Queen
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I've been doing a lot of thinking since April, after one of the big Panda rollouts. April 11th to be exact. It was like Google turned off a spigot. A few sites lost a significant amount of traffic. As I said, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I've come to the realization that having a website that spawns an online community is where it's at. While having great content is good, without community - an active, alive website that is a living breathing thing - you are going to have more and more trouble attracting and keeping an audience.
I've been following the basic post-Panda advice:
I've read a lot about time on site and bounce rate being important, but I have sites where the numbers are high and low (accordingly) and some were bit by Panda while others are doing better. Personally, what I've noticed more is sites with an EMD being hit the most. Yes, I went through an EMD stage of domain buying. As I said, though, I've filled them with good content (compared to eHow and the like), but they are missing involvement by a community. (That or a competitor has paid the microworkers to thumbs down or remove my site from the SERPs - things that it is said Google is looking at more closely now - which frightens me.)
Then again, the sites that are still doing well lack community and the online community I do have (that generates tons of great UGC every day) was hit a little bit as well. I saw Rand Fishkin's White Board Friday presentation today. And I've read some good analysis of it here and there on the web, but I still many inconsistencies. And I have to wonder if that is part of Google's plan - keep the so called SEOs guessing and endlessly debating while they work on ways to rank the web.
As I move forward, I am going to start working harder on building communities in the niches I am in. They are not EASY to start and you can't really buy them (for the most part), which is probably why they are going to be such an important factor for ranking on the post-Panda web in the months and years to come. While I do think my EMD is part of the problem in a few cases, the community aspect is lacking. While the pages per visit and time on site is high, the site is maybe not good enough for people to sign-up and contribute themselves?
Post-Panda, I think (quality) content is still king, but along with that - almost as a proof of that - getting people involved and active on a website is important. The same usernames being seen on the website multiple times when the Googlebot comes by and looks at the website. Surely they can pick easy pieces of information like that out of all the data they automatically collect. Time on site and pages per visit are easy to achieve or fake, but building an active, thriving community is not. Those who survive the fallout in the years ahead are going to start concentrating on that. Ever think about how active a community Amazon has compared to Walmart, kMart or other big retailers?
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K. Paul Mallasch publishes Webmaster Chronic, where you can learn more about buying and selling content online.
I've been following the basic post-Panda advice:
- Asking Google's 23 or so questions for each site
- Weeding out low performing or shallow pages
- Removing ads or putting them well below the fold
I've read a lot about time on site and bounce rate being important, but I have sites where the numbers are high and low (accordingly) and some were bit by Panda while others are doing better. Personally, what I've noticed more is sites with an EMD being hit the most. Yes, I went through an EMD stage of domain buying. As I said, though, I've filled them with good content (compared to eHow and the like), but they are missing involvement by a community. (That or a competitor has paid the microworkers to thumbs down or remove my site from the SERPs - things that it is said Google is looking at more closely now - which frightens me.)
Then again, the sites that are still doing well lack community and the online community I do have (that generates tons of great UGC every day) was hit a little bit as well. I saw Rand Fishkin's White Board Friday presentation today. And I've read some good analysis of it here and there on the web, but I still many inconsistencies. And I have to wonder if that is part of Google's plan - keep the so called SEOs guessing and endlessly debating while they work on ways to rank the web.
As I move forward, I am going to start working harder on building communities in the niches I am in. They are not EASY to start and you can't really buy them (for the most part), which is probably why they are going to be such an important factor for ranking on the post-Panda web in the months and years to come. While I do think my EMD is part of the problem in a few cases, the community aspect is lacking. While the pages per visit and time on site is high, the site is maybe not good enough for people to sign-up and contribute themselves?
Post-Panda, I think (quality) content is still king, but along with that - almost as a proof of that - getting people involved and active on a website is important. The same usernames being seen on the website multiple times when the Googlebot comes by and looks at the website. Surely they can pick easy pieces of information like that out of all the data they automatically collect. Time on site and pages per visit are easy to achieve or fake, but building an active, thriving community is not. Those who survive the fallout in the years ahead are going to start concentrating on that. Ever think about how active a community Amazon has compared to Walmart, kMart or other big retailers?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
K. Paul Mallasch publishes Webmaster Chronic, where you can learn more about buying and selling content online.