Google rolled out their “Panda” update across the UK over the last week. The main aim of the update is to try and eliminate content farms, i.e. sites that publish junk content! So that shouldn’t affect you in reality should it? Well no, not directly, but indirectly it will affect the link building work that you do to build pagerank and Google rankings.
If you spend time / money on building links to your sites, then you should have a look to see if the links you’ve previously set up have been affected by the Panda update. Basically if you did have a link building strategy that included getting links from link farms / content farms (if this is part of your strategy, you should relook at it anyway), you may now find that you have been adversely affected by the Panda update. If your traffic (non-paid organic) has dropped over the last week try these methods:
- Track the links to your site as well as you can, and request the low-quality sites to take down their links. It’s a matter of negative association, and it’s not worth the backlink!
- In the same vein as #1, focus your attention on cultivating backlinks from very high-quality and reputable sites in your niche, and register with directories with well-chosen keywords.
- Continue with your content creation. Do you have a blog? It’s surprising how many small businesses don’t have a blog attached to their websites or store fronts. Blogs are one of the best ways to keep your site fresh and continually updated with new content.
- Social Media: learn it, live it, love it! Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others are where your audience is now. People would rather connect with a friend online and build relationships with new people than be sold on a product. Share value!
Reports from the USA suggest that Google are already tweaking their original Panda algorithm (Feb 11), in order to make their attack on content farms more effective. No doubt this means that when they’ve worked it out there that they’ll move it over here so expect some more updates over the next month or two.
