Hi Guys
I thought so many seo guys are writing pages and pages of waffle (Speak or write, esp. at great length, without saying anything straight to the point) with no easy clear paths to follow about Google Panda, so I have come up with a no bull shit easy seo tips / suggestions to follow below.
What the hell is Google Panda
Google has a new learning algorithm that will look at the sites quality and I’m not just talking about Good SEO content and pretty pictures. Google will assess the usability for example is there to many advertisements running with external scripts that slows the page response time slow, is the site engaging in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter because I’m sure Google new algorithm looks at facebook likes and twitter re-tweet counts and the new Google+ button. If you have a low CTR from the Google results why not try and add rich snippets as they will sure increase the CTR and also raise your rank once Google notices your ctr is on the UP.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=21997
No nonsense Google Panda Tips and suggestions below.
- GSCTR (Google Serps Click Through Rate) in search.
Try taking the time to study your CTR in the Google webmasters tools as Google Panda is looking to rank sites with a higher CTR from the Google results pages. I thought I would start of a new seo buzz word term GSCTR (Google Serps Click Through Rate) for people who are not seo’s SERPS means ‘search engine results page’ and CTR (Click Through Rate).
With the new Google CTR Machine learning algorithm its best to try and adopt rich snippets when possible, below are 3 best snippets to use so try and use rich snippets like the star rating and photo tagging as seen in the Google results as this will increase ctr..More info- http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=21997
- Bounce rate – this is the time scale that someone is on your site.
- Yet again Google Panda update new Machine learning algorithms looks at this so try and think why people exit your site fast and try and make your site more engaging.
Just an idea add Facebook comments (see point 15 below) to your site this will keep people on your pages longer or if you have no video embed someone else’s video from YouTube relevant to your product.
- Keywords used as a domain is still powerful.
If you think about a new web address think about checking to see if there is an available domain to match your keywords.
- Large diversity of inbound links will increase rank – Old School linking is back .
Don’t just do mass forum profiles or blog comments links as this will no longer work and if you have done so you will of seen a drop.
The Panda update loves to see your content and good quality links on web 2.0 websites, article sites, social networks and blog networks, and then interlinking (linkwheel, link pyramids) them back to your main site like all seo’s did 2 years ago the old.Tip don’t just backlink your front page this is a very silly thing to do, more external links to other pages within your site will boost your front page anyway.
- Don’t Stop back linking.
Imagine an old wooden bucket and an old water pump;
you have to keep pumping away till the water gets to the top,
and what happens when you stop pumping water?
The water level drops away.If you stop offsite seo/backlinks this just shows a loss of popularity / interest in your site and
you will drop and your competitors will just past your by.Offsite SEO is very important FACT.
If you fail to do this so will your online business will fail
- Are ads killing your site rank?
Don’t kill your site by having too many ads pages in unnecessary spaces places please follow the guidelines here . Google also uses page speed as a ranking factor in their algorithm it might be worth killing some advertising on your site as heavy scripts like banners with flash and java scrip tracking adverts can slow sites down. Remember it might load fast on your PC but does it on others? Ask yourself are the ads revenue worth the rank drop? Try taken a few off that don’t pay you well.
Take a look at http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ and test your site.
- Fix Duplication - Kill / Delete unnecessary sub domains or redundant pages (pages with no hits or worth).
Do you have subdomains or redundant pages on your site that have no traffic = no worth please delete this content or disallow Google by using the robots.txt in the root of your website to control what’s listed on Google and what is not. If you’re worried about loss of hits or link juice you can pass it to a new target url by setting a 301 permanent redirect to the new location. A wordpress tip – If you’re using WordPress blogs and are using a TAG and Recent searches plugin, that makes loads of useless pages that used to work last year but now this will hurt you so disable these plugins. Try this search string in Google to look for the rubbish -> site:yourdomain.com study your first 10 Google result page and make sure your front page meta title and description tags is not duplicated on any other pages.WordPress tip add the below to your Robots.txt file in the root of your website.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /links/
Disallow: /category/
- Fix Url Duplication.
Re point 7 above also use site:yourdomain.com in the google search and make sure the correct url’s (web addresses) are displayed in the search results as you don’t want duplicate front pages or any other pages for example http://yoursite.com http://www.yoursite.com http://www.yoursite.com/ www.yoursite.com/index.php www.yoursite.com/index.html If you see these problems use the url canonicalization meta tag and also take note of the trailing /after your url’s you either have all url’s ending in / or remove them with the url canonicalization – don’t just take my word for it take a look at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066
- Duplicate content is a killer on crossed domains.
For example If you have a dating site targeting the UK yourdomain.co.uk and another targeting South Africa .co.za do not think you can use the same text copy on the co.uk and the .co.za the text must be over 70% unique in my personal recommendations.
- Crosslinking can kill all your sites.
If you own multiple web sites on the same server and the same ip address don’t on any circumstances link to each other, if you have no choice and need them use a NOFOLLOW tag on the link url.
From Google
- Mass internal footer links is a no no
Google needs to be sure what links are useful to the website visitor and having over 20+ links below your main content (footer) will confuse the ass of the Google bot and shows a bad usability sore.
If you’re on wordpress and have a tag cloud as mentioned above that is below the content this could be classed as footer links so kill it.
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Fix duplicate title and description tags
Google search this site:yourdomain.com this will show you what to fix or use Google webmasters tools error reporting.
- Delete auto generated pages.
Remove tag clouds and auto generated pages using search boxes within your site. This causes major duplication and foooks off Google panda.
Take note of point 7 above… - Internal pages that have no good content and I’m not just speaking about the body text.
Bad way to display products.
Best practice for internal product pages.
This below site is displaying products that show Google a good usability by adding price range and gender navigation by text
link anchors and most important well written product descriptions to persuasive people to buy.
- Add the Google +1 http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/+1/button/index.html to your site.
I’m sure Google will count these against your rank but this is not publically announced that it will.
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Social Media Integration.
Add Google+1, Facebook, Twitter buttons to your site and delete all others that don’t really give you any benefit.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/+1/button/index.html
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
http://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbuttonTry adding Facebook comments to your site http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/ as this will also reduce your bounce rate as people will stay longer on your site (user participation).
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Always promote Google on your site by using Google Plus, Google Maps, Youtube.
I have always linked Google from my client’s sites and have always helped for some strange reason. -
Have a great offsite Google Panda compatible seo strategy for natural back linking.
I currently have a waiting list and are only taking clients on by referral.
Final Note
- If this has helped use the comment box below.
- If you’re a seo consultant reading this document the above tips are from proven results that have been applied to sites targeting keywords/search terms with over 10 million competitive results.
- Matt Waterman aka MATTSEO has 17 years of Internet marketing under his belt since 1994.
- When choosing a SEO guys ask for proof of Google front page search results of high ranking keywords out of at least 1 million results.
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You get what you pay for FACT!