The Panda Update

How your social media presence will improve your search rankings

 

Terry CrosbySocial Media Training Blog

What is the Panda Update?

Reduce rankings for low-quality sites 

• sites which are low-value add for users• copy content from other websites or • sites that are just not very useful.

Increase rankings for high-quality sites

• sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

What makes a quality webpage? 

The short answer: Delivering the best possible user experience on your websites

Google asks themselves several questions as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. These questions all speak to • Trust• Authority• Relevance• Value

Trust

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic

well, or is it more shallow in nature?• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this

site?• How much quality control is done on content?• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend,

or recommend?• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs.

less attention to detail?• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily

produced?

Authority

• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?• Does the article describe both sides of a story?• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large

number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?

• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?

Relevance

• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?

• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?

• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?

Value

• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?

• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?

Low quality content

Low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings. You should • Removing low quality pages• Merge or improve the content of individual shallow pages

into more useful pages or • Move low quality pages to a different domain 

To learn how to improve a site that has been slapped by the Panda Update see http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/google-panda-farmer

What to do when another site is getting credit for your original posts. 

Problem:• Site A get crawled more often than site B• Site B creates original content• Site A steals the content and changes their time stamp• Google crawles Site A before Site B• Site A get credit

Solution:• Automatically tweet your post when published (people may

link to it)d• Use http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ pushes

content out

Your social activities are now ranking signals

Not all Tweets and/or Facebook updates are treated the same because search engines are now starting to rank YOU. The higher you rank the more search engines will trust that you can provide their searcher a good experience. What is a good experience? Actually, this could be several factors but let’s keep it simple – are you providing the searcher with the information searched.

A few factors search engines will be looking at when determining Your human rank: how many people you follow; how many people follow you the reputation and influence of the people you friend and follow. the reputation and influence of the people that follow you the relevance of the people you friend and follow the relevance of the people that follow you the quality and relevance of your updates and tweets the quality of engagement your tweets and updates receive the reputation and influence of the people that @mention you the reputation and influence of the people that retweet you

Source: Your Facebook and Twitter Reputation Will Determine if You Show Up in Search Results  

5 Ways To Improve Your Human Rank

1. Find your industries influencers and follow them on Twitter. klout.com allows you to search for influencers by topic (keyword). Organize your influencers into a Twitter list. Check that list everyday to see how you can contribute to their influence by retweeting and/or answering one of their questions via @mention.

2. Engage with your influencers and target audience on Twitter via @mention.3. Create a content strategy plan for your tweets. All Tweets need to relate to your industry

and be high quality. I suggest finding and subscribing via RSS to your industry’s most trusted blogs. Use Google Reader to manage your RSS subscriptions. Everyday review your Google Reader for high 

4. quality and relevant links to share on Twitter and Facebook.5. Use Twitter Search to find relevant conversations that you can join. I suggest spending

time listening prior to joining.6. It is best to start the relationship in Twitter prior to friending your influencers on

Facebook. If they have a Facebook Fan Page then “Like” it. Much like Twitter you will want to contribute to their influence by engaging with their Fan Page. You can easily check all of your influencers’ Page updates in a custom newsfeed by clicking on “Most Recent” on home page; click pages from drop down menu (see screenshot below). A few 

7. ways to engage are 1. “like” and comment their updates 2. let them showcase their expertise by asking them questions on their wall 3. share their links.

Additional social tips

http://terrycrosbyblog.com/twitter-training-tutorials/how-to-use-twitter-lists-to-accelerate-your-twitter-influence/

Post Panda Link Building Techniques

• http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2011/05/30-link-buildinglink-baiting-techniques-that-work-in-2011.html

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