When your blog gets interrupted by the vicious Panda, you like the rest of other bloggers put the blame squarely on the writers for all the mishap. Probably, you have made some contributions that have made your website an easy prey of an algo update from the house of Google, code named as Google Panda update. You simply cannot make me believe that an algo update like Panda have made the Googlebot powerful enough to judge the quality of the content. The world is still not such a great place. So, the concept of Panda checking the quality of the content manually is just a complete shit. So, you might be wondering what could have made your blog penalized if the quality of content is not such a decisive factor. The answer is not that straightforward and therefore, here I am going to share some probable reasons that could have incurred the wrath of the peace loving Panda:
Copy Content: Now I am not another dumb blogger. I know your blog does not contain a single duplicate article and you have never entertained such rubbishes. But are you damn sure that scrapper websites are not copying and pasting the same articles and thus creating almost hundreds of duplicate versions? Probably you are not. However, you could defend yourself by saying that you have got nothing to do with the scraper sites and it is the job of Google-bot to solve this issue. You are 100% correct but the problem is that the real world is seldom like this. Sometimes, Google-bot may fail to figure out who is copying whom. So, better safe than sorry. You should voluntarily bring this matter to Google’s notice by marking it as SPAM or just file DMCA and it will take down those scrapper websites from Google’s index.
Keyword Specific Content: Yes, I know it is hard to resist the idea of writing some keywords centric articles as they drive huge traffic to your website. But this has its own share of shortcomings. Having too many keywords centric articles are definitely a worrying sign. My assumption is when you are writing too many keywords centric articles, your blog come under the radar of Google. For say, if your blog has articles like these –
1) Great carpet cleaning services in Sydney
2) Awesome carpet cleaning business ideas in Melbourne
You are just inviting a penalty because either you are trying to boost the ranking of your website with those keywords or you are trying to earn some extra cash from Google Adsense.
Off topic Content: There are some bloggers who are always trying to squeeze out as much money from their blogs as possible and for that they do not mind posting random articles with paid links pointing to sites that are not at all related to the theme of the blog. You can find links of Poker, Viagra etc in those blogs and if this is not enough, they do not mind posting irrelevant articles in their websites. These types of blogs are easy prey of Panda. Do not make your blog an easy prey and for that reason you should not indulge in the luxury of posting irrelevant articles on your blog.
Thin Content: I am not ruling out the concept of having duplicate content can make your website penalized by Panda. Yes, there are still some chances of being scrapped out by Panda if your posts are totally rubbish and stuffed with innumerable keywords. Make your website content at least readable and make the content primarily for the users and not for the search engines and you would not have to fear Panda.
This article is written by Michael Evans. He is a passionate bloggers and he also contributes to a leading Web Design Library.
Nice post. I saw bloggers posting irrelevant content and with other niche links for money.
Though the point of “thin content” wasn’t very clear. Very informative post overall.
The spelling of Sydney is incorrect.
Ohh .. another typo .. seems like I will never be able to get over it .. holy shit . thanks for the catch mate 🙂
And what do you have to say about Readability score offered by Google?
@Harsh Agarwal
Great question no doubt .. but I have deep doubt whether this readability statistics have anything to do with Panda, though I can be wrong as well.. what I feel is that readability statistics offer by Google is by and large dependent on the words that are used in a given content and the common sentence structure .. i have personally tried it but to be honest, I do not find it good enough to worth a try .. so, my personal opinion is, Panda might not be taking cue from this readability thing and again I must make it clear that I may be wrong as well ..
Write for users, keep keyword density under 2-3%, remain on-topic and Panda will never touch you 😉
gr8 informative post!
bloggers should not use keyword stuff article just use keywords for 2-3% dats it …..
haha ………i think panda can understand …..its an English panda
i personally feel that we should not focus on panda penguin etc just keep users comfort your first priority and write for people not for robot
Well in my opinion Google is shifting focus upon websites getting backlinks from authority websites. I have seen websites that are listed in premium directories like Yahoo directory, Picasa Web, Best Of The Web and DMOZ are ranking higher in search results. It seems Google is placing heavy weight on some selected websites including Wikipedia and if someone succeeds in getting authoritative backlinks from those sites than rankings will boost. Content is just important as long as the keyword placement and lenght of the articles are concerned.
Hey Micheal,
I get 2-3 offers for paid links a month and I accept them when they are relevant to my blog. Do you think Google will penalize my blog for it? I wish to make the links nofollow, but the buyer won’t agree.
Umm .. it is a tough call… It is basically a hide and seek game .. if the posts are general and there is no promotional things involved, i think Google will never ever be able to differentiate between a paid post and a general one .. just do not make it obvious .,. simple
We have to blog for the readers and not for indexing and stuff..Writing for users will create dedication and make us write good quality articles. Then we can kick panda and penguin out!
Dealing with scrapper site is really a tough task. It’s not possible for a blogger running a small blog to monitor all of them and log DMCA complain for each . I have been complaining to Google for many website but there copied contents are still appearing in the search results. Well, I’m interested to know here, Which is the best way to deal with them. How can you monitor them ?
As Google mentioned many times “Write Content for user Not for Search engine ” is more important fact.I hope Future Google Panda update will be more quality and efficient update 🙂
This is what Google wants us to do but that does not mean that it is capable of judging the quality of the posts otherwise, we would not have seen sites with crap content ranking high even after the panda updates
Decent article, What I like the best is that it slams many stupid articles featured here on the past..
Everybody thinks that Google can read and figure out whether a post is good or bad, or they think that it is easy to develop such an algo. Hope those people get some sense knocked into them.
As for your 1st point, I disagree, it’s actually very easy to judge which person has copied whom… So, others copying you is no problem on your part, and won’t harm you (Unless they are ranking better, if they are, you should report that to Google)
Summing up, one of the best SEO posts I’ve seen on HBB in a while.
@Namanyay Goel – thanks for the kind words .. yes the first point is quite controversial and I do love courting controversy sometimes 😉
Hey Mate thanks for your information its really very useful for me because till now i also thinks that Google Panada penalize all those sites who have duplicate content and Grammar mistakes…..
Poor grammar can be an issue but this cannot be the one and only reason i think
If we have good content on our site then i don’t think so we need to scare from google Panda.Beside that always we should try to follow originality and valuable things.
Right on target. The term Panda is misunderstood by most of the webmasters. This is an eye opener. Thanks!
@Sidhant Chadha – thanks for loving it ..
Content is the #1 priority of both users and search engines. So we should always concentrate on our content. I agree with you that we should write for users but not for search engines..
@Avi Jit
Quality of the content is what matters and I believe that Google bot may be able to figure out keyword density and may follow certain pattern to judge the quality of the posts….