Some Optimizing Tips To Recover From Penguin And Panda

Penguin and Panda are two search algorithm updates that were recently employed by the search engine giant Google. All search engine optimized pages are bound to be affected in one way or the other by this update.

If your content has been affected then you could be forgiven for thinking that all that hard work has gone to waste with Google’s latest attempt to fight against low quality and duplicate content. But all is not lost and you can still recover from it by following a few simple steps.

Steps To Counter The Effects Of Panda And Penguin

• Delete all the articles that you think are not relevant and lack in quality.
• Give no-index to pages and posts without value for ranking in search results. For example, pages like Site Map and Contact Us have a hard time ranking high in the search.
• Use the Google Webmasters tools to optimize ranking. Delete URLs without a solid value in ranking.
• Fix the broken links using the “Xenu” tool and redirect where applicable.
• Dates on blog posts also have a significant impact on search ranking, so it is a good idea to get rid of the dates from the results.
• Remove irrelevant tags.

After following these simple steps, you should see your ranking return to normal. At the very least, you will notice at least an improvement. If you are not satisfied with the results, it is advisable to send an email to the Google Webmasters team informing them that you are not violating any of the guidelines laid down by them.

Image Credit: techlila.com

It is worth mentioning that one of the major updates that popped up with the Panda and Penguin updates is that the indexing of low quality content can cause the ranking of the entire site to go down, even if a good amount of your content is unique and useful.

How To Distinguish A Low Quality Site From A High Quality One

There is no universally accepted definition of low or high quality content; however, you can easily separate the two by asking a few simple questions:

• Do duplicate or redundant articles exist on the site with slightly different keywords?
• Is the site content outsourced to a lot of writers, or spread sprinkled across a large number of sites?
• Are the articles not as informative as a potential reader would expect it to be?
• Are there spelling or factual mistakes in the articles?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions, then you probably need to revise the content of your site in order to keep a safe distance from the negative effects of the Panda and Penguin updates.
It would be unrealistic to expect immediate improvement in rankings after taking the steps mentioned above because updates only occur periodically.

Remember that these updates happen to remind you not to be evil. It is always advisable to build trusted and loyal readers of your blog because you would never know when the next update might roll out and whether it would affect your ranking in a positive or negative way.

  Scott Heron

About the Guest Author:

Scott Heron is based in Edinburgh and is an online marketing expert. He has been helping people build quality websites for over 5 years. To find out more you can visit his website: http://scottheron.me/.