Google Panda – What to Do if You are Affected by the Update

Have you seen some changes in your rankings since the Panda roll out? Did your ranking plummet? Well, you are not alone. A lot of websites have been affected by the changes. As a matter of fact nearly 12% of all queries have been affected by the changes. Sites big and small are reeling from the after effects and are looking at their reports to check what they can do better.

Panda is indeed a major concern for web owners. How can it not be? If you want to restore your site’s traffic, you will be glad to know that there are things which you can do to recover. However, you need to put in time and effort to be able to make the necessary changes which will help you get your traffic back.

Focus on effective strategies

It’s important that you focus on things that matter so that you don’t end up wasting your time, energy and the company’s resources. So it really is critical that you know the things you should and should not do. Pleading sympathy from Google will not bring your traffic back. Google is in the business of giving users what they need without asking for too much of their time.

Google regularly tests their algorithms to check if it helps improve search quality or not. Unless the tests show improvements, Google will not roll out changes. Google, after all, is data driven. They want hard data and not just anecdotal reports to back up claims.

Don’t Waste Your Time on Google

For most web owners who were impacted by the changes, their initial reaction was to demand to speak to Google immediately so that they can get answers to their questions. This is just a waste of time and energy which you could have used somewhere else. There is nothing personnel in Google can do for you (even if you are able to speak to someone there). It is an algorithmic change so they will not be able to do any manual exceptions. Your site might have amazing content and they may be able to restore your traffic but they cannot put your site on a whitelist.

Ask questions

The Panda update targets sites with low quality content, thin content, duplicate content. Sites that benefited from the update were rewarded for the effort they put into writing quality engaging content that people may want to share. When you see your rankings or traffic plummeting, you should start asking questions right away. Why were you targeted? Look at your content… is it low quality? Do you have original content? There are businesses which are voicing their concerns and dissatisfaction via the PR route. They are issuing press releases demanding why Google branded their site as low quality.

Instead of asking why you became a victim of the latest update, you should focus on your content and ask what it is about your content which is being tagged as low quality. Ask yourself what you can do to improve your content and get more people to read or follow your site and articles. Turn the “why me” question into the “what is it about my content” question.