How Google Panda And Penguin Are Affecting The Web

The Google panda and penguin updates both shook the SEO industry. Intended to identify sites that provide spun articles, Google Panda and Google Penguin scanned the whole web, punished sites it found have copied or irrelevant content by pulling down their search rankings and/or suspending the sites Google AdSense accounts.

However, these two Google soldiers have different functions and if your site is to survive and triumph, you need to understand how each functions differently but complementary.

1. The Difference Between Google’s Panda and Penguin Updates

The Panda update focused on ensuring that sites that are given high SERPs are actually relevant to the search in question. Panda introduced algorithms that assess signals such as the bounce rate of a page, the clickthrough rates (CTR), the amount of content above the fold (i.e. the first thing you see when you load a page), and the number of clicks a page gets in results. One key thing about panda – and what a lot of webmasters fear – is that it no longer demotes low quality pages. Rather, it can demote the entire domain if there are a few low quality pages within it.

Penguin, on the other hand, penalizes what Google refers to as “over-optimisation”. It affects a lot of off-site work, such as poor quality backlinks, as well as a few design practices. It penalizes sites poor quality content, which are usually used to farm backlinks. In order to avoid being flagged by the penguin update, you need to include not only a large amount of text in pages that you want to rank, it should also contain contents that are unique, relevant, grammatically correct, and timely.

2. Complement Main Images

One of the image-related algorithm changes featured in Panda is that it places a lot of importance in sites that have content above the fold instead of ads. This runs counter to a lot of sites that use the topmost part of a website for images (as it makes sense from a design perspective, since it’s easier to catch people’s attention with images than text). If your site has an image above the fold, try to add text that will complement it, just to give the search engine something to associate with the image. A simple textbox with on-topic text will work wonders.

3. Considered Content

Keyword density is no longer as important as it used to be. That’s right. Google was clear that they changed their algorithm in a way that will no longer give “points” to the number of times a keyword appears, where it is positioned, and whether or not you used it in your subheads. Google said they are more concerned about the content and context of the content.

4. Plagiarized Content

Google has always disliked duplicate and plagiarized content, but the recent updates further tightens their already strict policy against duping content. You don’t have to copy the words of another site to be punished. If your site becomes notorious for having “similar contents” with other sites, you will be punished. You need to be unique.

5. Click Through Rates

Google now tracks the number of pages that a user clicks within the domain before leaving or returning to the results page, and uses it as an indicator of relevance. Webmasters should make a habit out of linking to relevant pages within their own sites. Don’t simply link pages just for the sake of encouraging a click through. Make sure there’s a natural flow of information to a need for more information.

6. Dwell time

Google’s PPC services already considers dwell time as a quality signal. Dwell time is basically the average amount of time spent on a page after the clickthrough. The longer the dwell time, the more relevant a site looks to Google.

7. Dwell Techniques

Now that the bounce rate is an important signal in Panda, dwell lengthening techniques or practices are starting to make their way into SEO site design recommendations. For instance, incorporating a slide show or a 30 second video clip engages a visitor for a long time while keeping them in the same page much longer than text would.

8. Grammar and Spelling

This is somewhat of a complicated thing. We don’t know any website that has openly admitted to falling in rankings due to grammar and spelling mistakes in their content. But it’s also considered good practice to ensure that your site is copy-proofed thoroughly. The recent Panda update factor in the grammar and spelling mistakes in the site, but not as strictly. It’s probably just to ensure that they catch sites made up of content that was taken from other sites and ran through a translator or spinner.

9. Anchor Text

Anchor text should not be used to indicate topic or targeted keywords. Rather, you should ensure that it’s directly connected to the link it points through. For example, instead of just “web design tips” as anchor, use “wbdesignDOTcom’s web design tips.” This will ensure that you provide proper accreditation to the sites you are linking to.

10. Embedding Content

If your site has an “embed this/link this” function, make sure that the anchor text it supplies will comply with the #9 tip above. One thing to watch out for is that if your site is huge, the embed links you provide may start looking like each other and may be misconstrued by Google as spam.

At the end of the day, Google’s Panda and Penguin updates doesn’t seem to shake things that much for sites that follow ethical and standard practices. The only ones that need to worry are sites who deliberately try to game the search engine instead of prioritizing user experience.

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