This post is designed to give you an understanding of the effects of the Panda Penalty on your site.
Any search engine penalty can be very damaging for any online business and if you do not take the time now to fix the problem then your site may suffer for may years to come.
To survive online in 2012 and into the future you need to ensure that your site maintains a high quality score.
To get an understanding of the elements let me explain, a Panda Penalty is all about your websites quality score. Firstly if you have seen a penalty you need to initially create a better user experience, meaning pages viewed and time on site as well as some social influence from Facebook, Twitter and so on.
Then you need to be looking at your overall site including the back links, site structure and on-page optimization. The whole algorithm change is designed to target low quality sites, however as many of us already know many good quality sites were caught up in this as well.
What Happens If A Site Receives A Panda Penalty
- Every link that has been built that has received a panda penalty is now a link that is not passing much benefit to your site or any other site.
- Every article or post that you write will never find its full potential in the Google Index if it has been penalized.
One of the reasons that some of the link networks were hit was simply because they had a lack of static elements on their networks. Another factor you need to look at with any network you intend to use for links is whether or not it leaves some form of footprint as it can be easily identified by Google.
So what are static elements?
To avoid getting in the cross hairs of Google you need to have these elements on every site you build. The elements include all the legal pages required such as a terms of service page, affiliate disclaimer, about us and contact page just to name a few. If the site is not prepared to identify itself to its users then it is a very good chance that it may be a spam site or in the case of the blog networks penalized for being a link farm and losing all linking power.
A Panda Penalty Has A Lot To Do With The Quality Score Of Your Website
Unfortunately there is no way of knowing exactly what score Google is giving your site, however so you can get some form of understanding about it we believe that it is much the same as the quality score used for AdWords. This is another reason why we suggest that you install the Google Analytics code on your site so that you can start to monitor exactly what is happening with not only your site but what and where your site visitors are doing on your site.
Over the next few weeks we will be giving you all the information you need so you can recover from any penalty received by Google. Firstly however we would suggest that you actually know and understand what your site is actually doing online and then start the process of improving your users experience. You can only effectively do this by using the Google Analytics account, you can not hide from Google online so it is better that you start using the information to your advantage.
This is the first step to recovery regardless of which Google penalty you have received.
Ultimately, if you have a panda penalty, then you are one of the lucky ones.
Panda only looks at on page elements, weak content, thin pages and near duplicates, internal duplication so with the right smarts to assess any technical duplication issues and with some rewriting of your content (and a scaling back of on page ads if that’s your thing) you can have a clear path to recovery.
Penguin, now that is a different matter. If your enough of your link profile is rotten, then there is often not a lot you can do. You could attempt to remove them, salvage what you can, fix the anchors and add some quality but often, it can be easier to burn the house down and start again.
Hi Marcus
I am inclined to agree with you here…
I have an older site that used some of the services that were caught up in the Penguin update and for the last seven months I have been trying to repair the damage, The site in question went from 3000 visitors a day right down to averaging around 120 visitors a day and it hurt.
As an example of the business loss experienced the site was getting anywhere from $30 a day right up to $70 in Adsense revenue plus affiliate sales, now I am lucky to see $5 dollars a week from the site if that.
Rather than write it off however I have used it as a learning experience and have been slowly working on correcting the penalty, once this site is free from Penguin I will write a post about it and what I did.
Despite the Panda updates, i still get terrible results on several of my Google searches-why is it so? Sometimes i feel that there is terrible injustice done to many sites-they have better quality and content yet i get sites on top which have spun content…and believe me- my work requires me to search literally hundreds of terms on a daily basis. So why this discrepancy?
Hi Dipa
Yes you are right, I think it is going to take some time to sort all this out and the only advice i can give right now is to keep creating sites with good unique content and also try and engage more in the social networks and in time hopefully you will see better results.
wow this is a very informative article about the Panda penalty. the tip about the legal pages is an eye opener. i wouldn’t have known the importance of those pages if i didn’t stumble upon your site! Great job and keep it up!
Very informative and useful post. This will help a lot to me as a new one in blogging. This idea enhances my capability to recover from panda penalty. Thanks for sharing this and its a very big help for me..
Thanks for this valuable info. There are many site that are being penalized after the Google Panda update. This is really helpful.
I personally think that Google’s primary goal is to reduce the visibility of sites with low quality content or those that are over-optimized for keywords and unusually dense with ads. There are straightforward solutions to recovering from the penalty in general like coming up with relevant content and employing proper SEO techniques. Thanks for giving us an in-depth look at what really goes on when a site is under the panda penalty.
Thanks for this great info. I have seen many sites getting penalized after the Google update. Quality is indeed something the SEO service providers should focus on to save themselves from further damage.
Thanks for the salutary share, Ron. The Panda Penalty can be extremely drastic for an online business but is highly preventable. I personally believe in the value of growing natural back links and I completely avoid over-optimization.
I personally think that Google’s primary goal is to reduce the visibility of sites with low quality content or those that are over-optimized for keywords and unusually dense with ads. There are straightforward solutions to recovering from the penalty in general like coming up with relevant content and employing proper SEO techniques. Thanks for giving us an in-depth look at what really goes on when a site is under the panda penalty.
Hi Emilia
Glad you like the post and hope it helped you out…
Great information. I have actually no exact idea what will be happen if the site has been penalized by Panda so glad to read this post because I was enlightened what will happen if your site has been penalized. Everybody must know this.
Hi Ashleen
This is just a very broad outline as to what can happen, you need to remember that Google is updating its Algorithm often with the Latest being the EMD update on the 28th September 2012 where exact match domains are now the focus of all the latest changes.
There was also another Panda update released the day before this as well. All I can suggest for now is keep your site content at a high level do not rush anything on your site and no longer write for the search engines but make it people friendly and interactive so people will engage your content in the social networks especially Google+.
Google update has brought with it penalization of many websites as we all know but your post is indeed helpful to steer clear out of the penalty. Thanks for sharing.
It explained everything I needed to know and I appreciate your post and especially your site.
I was not aware of the importance these pages have. I was under the impression they are only necessary if adversing with google.
You need to look as much like a real business as you can online. This also helps build credibility with site visitors which in turn should improve the quality of your site in the search engines.
How many sites have you visited online that do not even have a contact page let alone any privacy or disclaimer pages and this is a good indication not only for me but the search engines that the site is low quality.
Hi, Ron, you wrote a very comprehensive article. Thanks!