Post Panda SEO – 8 Things You Need to Know

December 6th, 2011 | 38 comments

google panda - what you need to know If you are associated with SEO in any way, you’ve likely seen the word “Panda” about 108,231,644 times over the past several months by everyone and their brother. PotPieGirl has been keeping up with it pretty extensively and has gotten alot of attention for it. And now, you can add one more to that number.

It can get a little confusing trying to figure out exactly what Panda is and what it means to you specifically. However, it’s important for you to know at least the basics because even if your current sites were not affected yet, future sites may be. You might start a new site and do the things you’ve always done, but it just never gains traction in Google.

As you may know, I run a very unique Performance Based SEO Service (take a look at our partner program if you have seo clients,) an offline internet business and I also have my own sites, many of which I like to optimize to get as much free search traffic as possible. So it’s important for me to understand and keep up with SEO.

Lets go over what I’ve learned and/or experienced over the past few months…

1. “Thin” sites get no love. If your site has only a handful of pages, start writing. For many years, you could create a small, five page content site, stick some adsense ads on each page, do a little seo to get those pages ranked for their respective long-tail keyword and you could easily be making money from that site every day. You can still do that, but you need to have more than 5 pages. For my “thin” sites I’ve increased the minimum to 10 and rankings have come back for many, but the more the better.

2. The longer the article the better. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. You don’t only need to add more pages, you need to ensure that each content page has alot of content. I went from a minimum word count of 300 to 400, but the more the better. Some people are even recommending 500 or more words.

3. Frequent updates are more important now than ever. People have been saying you need to frequently update your site to get good SE rankings for years and years. But in many cases it just wasn’t true. One good example is my Germany site. It went YEARS without a single update and it always held top rankings for some very competitive phrases. But when Panda came around traffic to the site tanked by over 50%. I added some new articles, updated some old articles, updated the entire site template and the traffic has been steadily coming back. So although this was not true for years when people were saying it was, it IS true now.

4. Your site needs to LOOK credible and useful. If your site holds any top rankings now or in the future, human reviewers from Google will probably see your site at some point. Design, structure and ad saturation are the major factors they look at. Do you have huge ads commanding the main parts of your site or do you use the opportunity to present your most valuable content? Does your site look like something from the 1980′s or is it clean and professional? Is the layout of your site good? Does it make sense? Is it easy for your viewers to find the content they need to find? These are all questions you should ask yourself.

5. Consider your entire site, not just “money” pages. From the examples I’ve seen, the Panda update targets entire sites, not just single pages. So when considering all of the points on this page, be sure to think about ALL pages on your site. Do you have pages that are indexed in google that really shouldn’t be? Pages that people really don’t need to see? Pages that serve no value to the searcher? If so you may want to delete them completely or at least add a META nofollow tag to those pages… you could also restrict them in robots.txt.

6. Be careful with affiliate links. Google never has been a fan of affiliate marketing, so this one really isn’t a change, but it’s as important as ever to cloak any affiliate links in some way, whether with some kind of link cloaker software or by simply redirecting a page on your site to the affiliate link, then using the rel=”nofollow” attribute on that link. So, for example, if my affiliate link is affiliatesite.com/?affid=34 I would create a redirect on my server that would redirect a page like mysite.com/bestsite to affiliatesite.com/?affid=34 then I would actually link to mysite.com/bestsite and in that href/linking code, add the nofollow attribute, which tells google to ignore it. Whether that is 100% effective in eliminating the chances of google finding out it’s an affiliate link, I don’t know. But it’s better than nothing.

7. Understand what the searcher is looking for. This is another thing that isn’t new, but more important than ever to realize. Both Google and Bing have one ultimate goal: to return pages to their search users that provide exactly what they are looking for. If your sites do not do that, then you are in for a long, uphill battle when it comes to SEO.

8. Article Marketing has changed. One of the big site types that the Panda update targeted where HUGE content sites including article directories. That does NOT mean that article marketing is “dead.” But it does mean that many article directory sites that previously provided good or decent backlinks to our sites via the articles we submit to them, now do not. So stop submitting to hundreds of article sites and concentrate on only the top few article sites. I actually limit my article submissions to ONE site these days. Sometimes that site is ezinearticles, sometimes it’s a LinkVana blog and sometimes it’s another site, but I don’t syndicate articles anymore, just to stay on the safe side.

These are what I’ve found to be the most important points, but I’m sure there are other SEO’s out there that would add to it. The most important thing to remember is that SEO is always changing and the ultimate goal of the major search engines, as I explained in point #7, is to provide the best possible page to the searcher… a page that provdies the EXACT information they are looking for and gets that info to them in the quickest and easiest way possible. If you always keep that in mind, you’ll be good to go!

(If you’re not already subscribed, remember that if you would like a free SEO tip from me sent directly to your cell phone once per week, free of charge (aside from standard text messaging rates associated with your cell company) and you’re in the U.S. just text “seo” (without quotes) to this number: 50464. This is a service provided by FunnelPro, an SMS Marketing Company that also has a great affiliate program.)

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38 comments

Ben (1 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 12:21 am

Good points Josh, and a very well written post!

However I am not sure that Google has never really been a fan of affiliate marketing. They might see it as a necessarily evil I suppose, but it depends on the sort of content you put out there.

My belief is that they hate affiliates (and indeed non-affiliates) who don’t provide any value to the search results. If you provide a whole ton of good content with the occasional affiliate link then you are pretty much safe I think. Actually building some pages without any affiliate links is a good way to make a site look more honest too.

But you definitely have to provide value. If we as affiliates are going to be the middle man then we need to give the consumer a reason to take that extra step in the buying process as opposed to going straight to Amazon for example and searching for the product there.

Personally I have been removing a lot of affiliate links from my posts just to make the page look like it is more about providing value and not about making the sale. I’d also want to minimise the chances of the site being penalised by a manual reviewer (i.e. a real person).

As far as the whole affiliate marketing concept is concerned, it has been around for a long time – long before the internet was conceived, I can’t see it dying out any time soon. Besides, Google have their own affiliate network anyway. How would they expect us to make money without building sites to review products?

Affiliate marketing done the right way does add value to the web if 20 bits of important information about a product are organised neatly on a single page for example.

Thanks again!
Sergio Felix (2 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 12:40 am

Wow man,

I think I have a LOT of work to do on my blog in updating all the affiliate links.

But I’m so glad I stumbled into your post.

Thanks for sharing this and I will do this I guess tomorrow.

I’ve heard one of the best ways is to just drop all the affiliate links inside a specific folder and then attribute that folder to NOT get indexed by the google bots and then add the no follow attribute to each aff link used.

Thanks anyway for remindind me of this bro, looking forward for your next tip!

Sergio
Grady Pruitt (1 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 6:57 am

Number seven is one of those that is both simple and yet complex. It is simple in that it should be obvious that we should be trying to write content for what people are looking for. And yet sometimes we get focused on our own ideas of what people might be using a particular term for that we may miss what they truly are looking for. Still, it is one of those things we have to do if we expect to get results long-term.

Thanks for sharing this great post.
David (1 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 10:26 am

Really helpful summary Josh. Thanks.
Alex (4 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 10:49 am

Josh, I think your point on the length of articles is spot on! My natural pattern of writing is to write short posts quite often!

What Google seems to want is not the 300 word posts but much longer – 800 words or over. Naturally this take longer to write or more costly to outsource.

The thinking seems to be that experts and authorities and we have to position ourselves as such – have lots to say!

That’s it – so long articles are the new order of the day. If you are terse like me then you just have to join a couple of short articles up!
Carlton
7th December, 2011 at 11:13 am

Hi Josh,

Just this week I have been “cleaning up” my desktop and email lists. I do this couple of times a year…remove the digital clutter. I tell you this because you are never removed; why? Well, this article is a perfect example of why.

Josh, in all the years I have been associated with you, you have never failed to provide exactly what you claim to provide, namely, ‘ethical marketing’ information.

I don’t always agree with everything you say but I always come away having gained something; even if it’s just to cause me to think along new lines.

Based on what I have been learning about Panda I would have to say that you are spot on. I heard an interesting analysis of how we should be treating Google and it was along the lines of, ‘make your sites Grandma friendly. Would your site appeal to Grandma; can Grandma navigate it; does it provide information that Grandma wants; can Grandma find it (has caused me to re-evaluate keywords); is it in Grandma’s neighborhood (does she feel safe); etc. You get the idea. This is how Google is looking at sites and it is what we have to deliver.

I always get a kick out of marketers getting upset with Google; like they owe us something. Nonsense!! They are running a business with a focus and goals. We have to respect that focus and work within it. If we do we will benefit; if we don’t, eventually we will get slapped and brought in line.

Well, I rant. See, Josh, you get me thinking.

Thanks again for a great, useful article and as always I look forward to more.

Regards,
Carlton
Angie Berg (45 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 11:21 am

Good reminders, Josh. As Ben mentioned, the bottom line is that we need to add value through our online marketing efforts. Your article is a great way for people to structure that value in a way that will help position us in the best spot for long term success. It will be interesting to see how the next Panda update affects the search results. I’ve had to clean up a few places on a couple of sites where I got lazy. Hoping it shows and is rewarded.
Robb Corbett (1 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 12:03 pm

Hey Josh, good post man…

I experienced must of the same with my Niche sites, dropped in ranking but when added more content they started coming back.

However when it comes to article marketing (syndication) I have not found that has hurt me any, in fact I do not see how it could. The old argument that if Google penalizes you for links from article directories, one could easily start blasting out links to competitors.

It may not be as effective as it was, but still a link, would it not be?

Later man

Robb
John Blakemore (1 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 12:14 pm

These are all good key points to keep in mind as you are building a site. For me personally, I do everything manually including the writing of the site content, articles, manually submit each one, etc. It takes a painstakingly amount of time and effort, but I think Google likes it. I try to keep all my SEO white hat to stay on top of the game. I think in the long run, it works.
Thanks for the great post Josh….
Craig Peters
7th December, 2011 at 12:15 pm

How does effect local searches? If you create a site for a small business does it have to be 20 pages?
Rika Susan (23 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 12:39 pm

Good one, Josh. I think these are very important post-Panda strategies to keep in mind. But where to go next if you do follow these guidelines as far as possible, but still struggle to regain rankings?
darin (1 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 1:12 pm

Good info but IMO panda is really been overblown as to what google wants and is not so hard to figure out. If the average affiliate would just stop doing under handed tactics and concentrate on good content they will not have a problem. Google is not god they do not see and know all. Stick with good old fashioned reputable tactics and you will be fine. This means take it easy on profile links, blog comment spam and crappy spun articles! And sorry no more auto blogs built from article directories!
Josh Spaulding
7th December, 2011 at 1:31 pm

@ Ben – You’re right, the problem is affiliate marketing isn’t done the right way by 95%. Most affiliate sites out there were put together by marketers who have never even used the products they’re recommending. Look at it from Google’s standpoint. I’m sure they don’t have a problem with the affiliate model… but yes, they definitely have a problem with affiliate marketers.

@ Sergio – That would be one way of doing it, yes.

@ Carlton – Thanks for the kind words. They are greatly appreciated! Glad to help.

@ Robb – Yes, a link is still a link. I’m not saying not to do it. I’m just saying mass distribution of articles isn’t very effective anymore. Limited distribution is though.

@ John – Nothing wrong with doing things manually at first, but if you’re financially able to outsource I highly recommend it. You’re limiting the growth of your business by not outsourcing.

@ Craig – It depends on the keywords you’re targeting for the local business site. If they aren’t very competitive you can still get a top ranking with little content. If the keyword(s) is competitive then I’d add some content.

@ Rika – It may just take time or it may be unrelated to Panda. Maybe you just need to build some more solid backlinks?
Rika Susan (23 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 1:56 pm

Thanks for your response, Josh. It happened with the Panda update in May. My site was doing well before that. It has now been 7 months. Tough to keep going. But I don’t plan on giving up any time soon! Funny thing is that, while the rankings dropped, I have had a jump in pagerank! Yes, I am continuing to add new links and content.
Paul (10 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 1:58 pm

You can still make decent money by building informational Niche Websites. Example:, If you are a cook you could put up hundreds of recipes pages on the different ways to cook whatever. No duplicate content, no re-written articles or plr stuff just your own site about how you cook.

Setup an adsense account add it to your website without any affiliate marketing whatsoever and whala…you have monetized you site without the fear of google banning your site.

Of course you still have to learn seo, write articles and so on…
Paul
Don (2 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 2:30 pm

Hi Josh,
I received an email about a month ago from another marketer emphatically stating that I needed to “uncloak” any affiliate links that I had going to amazon.com.

It stated that a friend of this marketer was banned by Amazon for cloaking their links and that it was against Amazon’s TOS. Apparently they feel that cloaked links mislead people and they want them to know that they will be going to the amazon site before clicking.

This may only apply to amazon, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Rhonda Morin (17 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 3:24 pm

So if you are not submitting articles, syndicating articles, what are you doing for marketing? You built an entire business on that. I am confused and I agree with the other poster that if Google didn’t like it that essentially I could put someone out of business by blasting them. In the long run I would think they would end up liking me.

Rhonda
Sean Breslin (6 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 3:41 pm

That was useful info Josh, I will look into linkvana? That’s a new one on me! With the exception of cloaking all affiliate links I do pretty much the same for my standard onsite SEO.
Erim
7th December, 2011 at 6:43 pm

Great post, Josh. Thanks. I had my main money site hit by Panda in mid October, and lost about 60% of my traffic. I think it’s probably due to the same reasons your Germany site got hit, so I need to get to work.

Regarding Google not liking affiliate sites, the PotPieGirl post you linked to mentions that Google actually stated they think they’re “an unnecessary step in the sales funnel.”

This is really interesting to me, considering Google makes most of it’s money from Adsense. I use Adsense, and it works well for me. But, as a site owner, you certainly have much less control over Adsense, and ensuring it’s not an “unnecessary step” than you do providing targeted affiliate links.

Google just cracks me up with their double standards sometimes. They must keep the search team and the Adsense team in entirely different buildings, and not even let them socialize at the Christmas party so search doesn’t get soiled by those taudry money making types.
Josh Spaulding
7th December, 2011 at 6:51 pm

@ Don – I hadn’t heard that and I don’t think it’s an issue. If it were it would be a big story in the IM space. Probably a rule they have, but very rarely enforce… that’s my guess anyway.

@Sean – LinkVana is a great link building option.
Josh Spaulding
7th December, 2011 at 6:54 pm

@ Rhonda – Article marketing is only one link building technique, and link building is only one SEO technique and SEO is only one online marketing technique and online marketing is only one overall marketing technique. I wouldn’t say I built my business on article marketing…not at all.

However, I do still perform article marketing and recommend it. I just don’t recommend submitting articles to loads of different sites.
Sandra (2 comments.)
7th December, 2011 at 7:42 pm

It’s great that you listed a whole lot we CAN do. All of sudden Google didn’t like my adsense ads on a site over 5 years old. I am now building other sites and totally agree about article marketing – it used to be so easy – write an article, link to your site and you were ranked in Google. Now not easy at all.

Still, life would sure be boring if it stayed the same so we should all get on top of these new strategies.

Thanks Josh
Stef (54 comments.)
8th December, 2011 at 1:11 am

“Whether that is 100% effective in eliminating the chances of google finding out it’s an affiliate link, I don’t know. But it’s better than nothing.”

Or in other words: I do something but I don’t know if it helps. Which is a good way of saying that nobody knows what Google’s algorithm is, but we sure know they want quality (which is still different that a quantity wordcount).

Cheers
Ridley Harrison (2 comments.)
8th December, 2011 at 1:19 am

Hi Josh,

I find your post interesting and hopefully helpful also. I will be going back to my affiliate sites and use your eight points to improve them.
My sites are new and i am new to what i am doing too.

Thanks much
Ridley
Petono Soares (2 comments.)
8th December, 2011 at 2:21 am

Josh, really good post. Interesting tips to avoid Panda monster.

What you wrote on your number 1 advice: for me it continues working.

I have some 9 ish websites with only 5 pages, “did a little seo to get those pages ranked for their respective long-tail keyword” and they continue giving me some good money.

But I noticed some changes on the SEO arena, so we need to know better new strategies to be on top of Big G and you show them very well.

Thanks!
Scott Smith
8th December, 2011 at 12:35 pm

Josh,

Thanks for the post.

However I’m still confused as to why Google still ranks thin sites — even squeeze pages — sometimes high above “thick” relevant sites. For instance, put in “internet marketing success” without quotes and one will see all the top rankings made up of ultra-thin sites: sales pages, squeeze, <5 pages, etc. Your site shows up (which is a very content rich and relevant site) yet it's beneath those others.

What do you think it the explanation for this?
Franck Silvestre (2 comments.)
9th December, 2011 at 8:54 am

One of my websites went from 5000+ to less than 2000 visitors, so I need to update those articles.

Traffic to this site that has more than 30 pages was increasing month after month (it’s there for 2+ years), but it was not a thin affiliate site.

It’s amazing to see that many people still sell products that help to create thin affiliate sites and market them.

Franck
Rhonda Morin (17 comments.)
9th December, 2011 at 2:55 pm

Franck Silvestre, same thing happened to me. I have hundreds of articles on my site and I went from 65,000 uniques per month to maybe 11,000 if I am lucky.

What do I do in this situation? I don’t have any affiliate links on any of the pages.

Anyone got any ideas?????

Rhonda
Josh Spaulding
9th December, 2011 at 2:57 pm

Franck and Rhonda, when was the last time your pages were updated?
Josh Spaulding
9th December, 2011 at 2:58 pm

Scott – there are always exceptions to the rule… nearly all of them. But FAR less thin sites rank now compared to not long ago.
Rhonda Morin (17 comments.)
9th December, 2011 at 3:14 pm

For me it was late summer because Google decided to close down my Adsense account. I spent weeks trying to figure out what I did wrong and updated everything from there. I am finally getting ready to get it on WordPress this week so it will be completely different but it’s hard to go from thousands and thousands of visitors to nothing.

Rhonda
Stef (54 comments.)
9th December, 2011 at 4:24 pm

@ Frank and Rhonda:
-how unique are your articles and
-do you feel ok to knock on Google’s door and tell them: “hey: this is good content, don’t you think so?”

If both questions are 100% , then do you see any of your competitors who made an extra effort lately?
Rhonda Morin (17 comments.)
9th December, 2011 at 4:27 pm

I am fine with that, I had google email me and say put ads here and here and here. I did that and it increased my income but then Panda hit and I was dealing with personal tragedies and didn’t get the time to figure out what was going on. I am going to rewrite every single article on my site because there are thousands of people robbing me. I even filed a police report against Blinds.com

And I am beating out HGTV for BIG keywords. I beat out About.com for big keywords, but I don’t understand the decrease in traffic. Only thing I can think is that I am not ranking for the long tail keywords any more.

Rhonda
Stef (54 comments.)
9th December, 2011 at 5:03 pm

Hi Rhonda,

Thanks for your extra feedback. First and foremost: you are up against “some big guys”, so be prepared that Google could rank the big guys higher than you, just because they are big guys.

Having said that: I see your main page in copyscape gives “copied results”. Since you talk about “1000 of people robbing you”: are they showing your rss feeds? If yes, then set your feed setting on “excerpt”, in stead of the whole article.

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

Stef
Stef (54 comments.)
10th December, 2011 at 2:28 am

@Rhonda,

Would love to hear Josh and other’s input on your rankings.

Had a second look at your site, so RSS is not the issue, people copying your articles (with and without link back to your site) seems to be the issue here.

Putting articles in directories used to be a huge boost, and as far as I understand Josh: it’s still considered a good SEO strategy. However…
-if people copy yor stuff without a link back, there is not much benefit for you
-their is a tendency that ghostwriters write “flodder text” for the article directories. (looks good but no real content) Unfortunately these poor content articles take the good authors down with them. (Or in other words: you could be the best boatsman ever but if you are on the Titanic, you are going down, no matter what you do).

I see you gave your solution already: I am going to rewrite every single article on my site.

A big job ahead Rhonda, but then decorators are used to big jobs: start with the articles that used to give you traffic, and go on steadily: chances are that Google will pick up in a few months time.

Hope that helps,

Cheers,

Stef
Dr med Dragan Stojicevic (1 comments.)
15th December, 2011 at 2:12 pm

Hi Rhonda,
I agree with the comment above.
Beware of the big guys, but dont be scared.
Go, go, go
Rhonda Morin (17 comments.)
15th December, 2011 at 3:39 pm

Thank you all for help. I do feel empowered!!! I am getting ready to switch over the WordPress, FINALLY, and that will help me I think in the long run to add good content. I want to “spin” my content so it is unique and we will be done with it.

Anyone know of a good way to not get content stolen?

Thank you everyone, including Josh, you have helped me so much.
Danny Chapman (1 comments.)
20th February, 2012 at 3:56 pm

Josh,

awesome post and a very good read but I wonder if the 8 things you describe would be different if you wrote them now? I mean all the indications show that Google is putting far more weight onto social media indications, how does that effect your strategy?