Google Panda 2.5 update made its way through their web universe this past October. Google Panda is known as Google’s algorithm for determining which website to rank in the top of search engines based on specific searches. This particular update left SEO experts scrambling for answers.
It turns out that Google Panda’s new update is primarily focusing on quality websites. Google sees that there are too many spam and “junk” websites appearing at the top of search engines. In an effort to change the way Google ranks these sites, Google Panda (update) 2.5 is heavily focused on unique, lengthy, quality website content.
Aside from quality content, Google is also focusing on social interaction outside of websites. Web socialization is important in the internet world these days, so it’s important to interact outside of your website.
If your website was affected by the Panda update, there are a few things you can do:
- Make sure your content is of good quality: Good quality content is keyword-rich, relevant and grammatically correct. Your website content should flow and contain valuable information. Webpages with 400 or more words hold more value to the search engines, so website text should be lengthy.
- Quality website design: Web design and layout features are becoming more important for websites to be considered “quality.” There are important navigation features, layout options and appearance themes that Google takes notice of.
- Social media: Creating social media accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter will help you interact outside of your website. Google takes notice of these interactions.
- Social networking: Along with social media, it’s important to share your quality content across Web 2.0 platforms. Submitting your website, webpages and blog posts to social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Stumbleupon or Delicious also grabs Google’s attention.
There are other ways to bounce back from a Panda update “attack,” such as updating your website often, checking your title tags, meta tags, descriptions and other SEO areas. It’s very important, though, to have a quality website contain quality content. Google is updating its algorithm constantly and you don’t want to be affected by the next update.