Content Audit After Google’s Panda Update
There are a lot of webmasters that were affected by Google's latest update to the algorythm. I was one of them as two of my sites saw around a 40% drop in the traffic received from Google's organic search. It's still early, but after reading as much as I could about the different sites that were affected and testing those findings against what I found with my sites I decided to make a few changes.
The Old Way
Previously, I had a couple of sites that were listed in Google News. For these sites, my content strategy was focused more on producing in bulk. We tried to get to around 300 words of unique content centered around our niche and the hot topics currently going on. I wanted my writers to fly through and get as much content posted as possible. As a result we saw huge spikes in traffic when something was picked up, but I'd say that the traffic was fairly low quality. I had recently decided to move towards more evergreen content and less news related stuff since the conversion rates were so much higher. However, I had a lot of articles on my site with a low word count.
The Content Audit
The keyword centered around this Panda update has been "quality." Now my short news stories were all uniquely written and covered what they needed to cover, almost always with links pointing to more detailed sources.
The problem was that they were very "thin" because of their shortness. Since Google is looking for more detailed, thoroughly researched content I decided to go through and delete everything under 500 words long. I thought 500 words was the safest choice, but if there was a piece of content under 500 words that I thought was useful, had links, and was high traffic then I marked it for an update instead of deleting it.
Step 1: Delete all posts under 500 words long (or shorter if you aren't comfortable with this number.)
Next, I knew that I had a pretty poor incoming link count in relation to how many pages were on my site (check Webmaster Tools for you incoming link count). The true sign of "quality" is supposedly having other webmasters linking to your content with the understanding that other sites won't link to crap.
Since I was producing so much stuff, I didn't really worry too much about working on building links to my site and thus have a lot of pages with no incoming links. I didn't want to get rid of everything without an incoming link though because I thought if it's useful, I can at least try to work on getting some links to it.
The final step I took was to pull up Google Analytics and look at my traffic numbers. If a page had received less than 100 visitors over the past year, then it's not doing a lot for me and was a candidate for deletion.
Step 2: Delete all posts with 0 incoming links and less than 100 visitors over the past year
One of my two sites lost more traffic than the other. The site with the biggest traffic loss I feel like was benefiting more from the authority given to large sites. It's not that I was penalized as much as I had a lot of links passing anchor text juice to my landing pages. On that site I didn't have as many external links coming in to those landing pages, and saw a huge drop as a result.
Step 3: Work on getting more links to your content
I'm writing more guest posts and am engaging more in the community in the hopes of getting more links to my sites. I'll let you know how this pans out.
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Google’s Farmer Update
Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to ensure that they give their users the best results possible, but early on February 24th they made a pretty big change. According to their blog post this "improvement" is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites.
What's defined as low-quality? Sites that copy a significant amount of their content from others or that don't add a lot of value for their users.
The goal here is to help promote high-quality content and the sites that produce it. If you want your site to rank then you have to produce original content that is throughly researched, providing an in-depth answers to what searchers are looking for.
There has been a lot of talk about "content farms" recently, so this update has been named the "Farmer Update" by several webmasters. It seems the intent was to de-value sites that mass-produce content like Demand Media, AOL, and Maholo.
This change has caused a lot of backlash from webmasters who felt like they were producing quality content before, only to see their rankings suffer a serious drop. Nobody is entirely certain what made their site become less-valueable in the eyes of Google, but I have a theory.
Sites that mass produce content do not get a lot of links. Some sites produce thousands of new articles each and every day, but they are not getting that same number of links. I think the key to ranking high with the new Google will be to build less news style content and more quality, evergreen content that will have a better chance of getting linked to. You might have to work a little harder at getting links to all of your pages, and not just focusing on the landing pages you most want your users to get to.
I don't think any site got a direct penalty. I think what happens is that normally each page that you have produces pagerank that you can use to drive anchor text towards your landing pages. Under this rule large sites win out in the long run because they can drive more pagerank to the pages they want to rank. With this update, pages that are worthless (in Google's eyes) aren't helping the sites push pagerank to their landing pages. Thus, the sites that went down in the rankings are just suffering a drop due to their internal links being discounted.
Now that's just my theory, but I think it matches up with Google's intent. Produce high-quality stuff, update it when need be, and it should draw links from other sites. If you are doing this I doubt your site will ever go unappreciated in Google's eyes.
Update: I checked WebmasterWorld and found an interesting post from user "DanAbbamont." His data showed the hit article directories have taken:
Article Directories Have Been Devalued Significantly
- ezinearticles.com lost an average of 34 positions
- hubpages.com lost an average of 31 positions
- squidoo.com lost an average of 15 positions
- articlesbase.com lost an average of 29 positions
- buzzle.com lost an average of 30 positions
- associatedcontent.com lost an average of 22 positions
- suite101.com lost an average of 33 positions
Update: Sistrix has a nice list of sites that have been hit hard by the newest update. The top six are WiseGeek, EzineArticles, Suite101, Hubpages, Buzzle, and AssociatedContent.
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Duplicate Content Penalties
People worry about duplicate content penalties in a lot of different situations. One of the more popular comes when it's done intentionally with article marketing, with how content management systems archive content, and when scrapers are stealing your content. Let's address each form in turn.
Article Marketing
If you post the same articles on several different directories, you are not going to get penalized and neither are they. What I have seen is that the more times your article gets posted around the web, the less value you see out of the incoming links from those articles. So if your article is distributed to 100 sites instead of only 10, it's not going to be 10 times as effective for you.
Think about this from Google's perspective, when a user enters a search query, do they want to list hundreds of the same articles? No, because if the user doesn't find what they are looking for in the first they want to move on to something different.
If you are using the same articles on your site as you do on others, simply putting a link back to the original article on your site will let Google know which article should appear in the index.
Your Own Site
You obviously don't want to intentionally create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with the same content. That is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines and could cause you to be penalized. There isn't an automatic filter or penalty though. If you read Google's definition of duplicate content they specifically say it is not grounds for action unless it appears to be deceptive or used to manipulate search results.
One problem I do see on sites is when they use really short articles. If your template is really big and you have a lot of links in your menus then a short article can appear to be more than 50% the same as other content on your site. Two ways you can help to make sure you don't run into this trouble. One, is to cut down on the size of your menus and the second is to make sure you use at least 250 words of original content in all of your articles.
Scrapers
I'll define scrapers as anyone who takes the content from your site without permission. Most of the time these sites violate Google's Webmaster Guidelines since they have little to no original content of their own.
Your site is not going to get penalized for having scrapers pick up your content. Again, think about it from Google's perspective. If a competitor is outranking me could I really get them banned by just creating 100 fake blogs and scrape all of their content? That wouldn't make sense.
The problem that you may run into is Google index's the scrapers version of your content instead of your own. However, the chances of that happening on an established site is pretty rare since the scrapers are normally pretty low quality. And Google recently launched a campaign to weaken the ranking of content farming sites.
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Google Dominates December 2010 Searches
ComScore has released their search analysis for December of 2010 and it is no surprise that Google continues to lead the way. Google accounted for 66.6% of all searches conducted in the United States.
There were 16.4 billions explicit core searches conducted in Dedember with Google taking 66.6% of them, that is up 0.4% from November. In second place is Yahoo with 16%, down 0.4% from last month. Bing comes up 0.2% to 12% overall. Ask is all but forgotten down to 3.5% while AOL garners 1.9%, even though both of these are powered by Google.
What does this mean for you? If you want traffic via the search engines, it's best to focus on Google. They are the most reliable in terms of ranking factors and do the best job of removing spam from the index. This means it's easiest to actually get ranked, which is good news when you see that most of the search engine traffic that you are going to get comes from their results!
What to know how to get started moving up the rankings? Take a look at my simple SEO strategy guide and find out how you can start getting more traffic by getting listed higher in the search engines.
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Why Content is King
Finally it seems that even the big boys are starting to understand that when it comes to making money on the the Internet, content is king. Just a few days ago I wrote an article about why people go online and it came as no surprise to me that "to learn" was the number one reason to surf the web. Well now that large businesses like Time Warner, Yahoo, and AOL are finally catching on.
Of course ad spending is supposed to go down 7.6% this year and since we are still in the midst of a recession, that number isn't likely to make a large jump any time soon. The reason for optimism you ask? Ad spending on newspapers, magazines, radio, and television is going down, but online advertising revenues are projected to grow by nearly double digit figures!
Most companies are considering content to be valuable because they want consumers to pay for high-quality products, but instead they should realize that higher quality content builds links, which increases your search engine presense, which builds traffic, of which more are going to keep coming back if you give them something that they are interested in. That's a nice little cycle to have, a constant flow of new traffic coupled with readers who keep coming back for more.
So, even if you run a blog or small-business, produce quality stuff that people want to keep coming back for and you'll grow your business. You don't have to charge people to read your content to make money, you can benefit from the increase in ad spending and still cash in while keeping your information FREE!
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Improving Quality Score
Google doesn't exactly tell you what formula they use to determine quality score, but there has been plenty of testing done by experienced marketers to give us a few guidelines. If you have a quality score of 0-3 that is considered "poor" while 4-7 is just "OK." The scores of between 8-10 are "great" and it means you are definitely on the right track. If you are in the 0-3 category then you might need a major revamping of your whole website, but a few simple tweaks can turn those OK ads into great ones.
1. Improve Your Click Through Rate - How do you do this? By split testing your ads, waiting until you get at least 30 clicks and then throwing out the loser. Then test the winner against a new ad you create. Rinse and repeat until you have the ad with the highest possible CTR.
2. Put Your Keyword In Your Ad - Are you using one ad for several different, related, but not totally similar keywords? Then get more specific with your ads, putting the keyword somewhere in the ad. This will also help your CTR as the keyword will be in bold.
3. Check Your Landing Page - You need a lot of keyword-relevant content on your landing page. This again goes with your keywords, if you are sending a lot of related but not similar keywords to the same page you could be hurting your score. Maybe it's time you create a specific landing page for a tunneled down version of your keywords.
4. How Quick Your Visitors Leave - Are you matching your visitors needs with what you are offering? Give them plenty of options with links to other sections of your site. The days of just having an opt-in page are long gone. You need the visitor to stick around and not hit the back button or just leave and go elsewhere.
Follow these four simple steps to improve your quality score and to help keep you from receiving the dreaded "Google Slap".
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Google Adwords Tips for Beginners
Getting your site to rank high in the search engines is not a quick and easy process. It takes a lot of work on your part and it takes time for the search engines to find your site and then trust it enough to rank it high in their results. If you want to get a jumpstart on using Google, Yahoo, Bing or other engines then the quickest way to get your site out there is to use pay-per-click advertising. I personally prefer Google Adwords, since they are the biggest and have the most tools available to advertisers. This will help you test out what ads work and which do not before moving your campaigns over to different properties.
1. Educate Yourself - There is a pretty steep learning curver so make sure you read or watch all of the information in Google's learning center guide so you know your way around the Adwords interface. If you want to really become an expert in pay-per-click marketing though, try Perry Marshall's definitive guide to Adwords. This five day program will have you ready to get started in no time, and will have you prepared to dominate your niche.
2. Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew - If you are just learning how pay-per-click works, you are going to want to start off small in a non-competitive niche. The goal for your first campaign will be to learn how the system works and which tools are available to you. Don't try bidding on weight loss keywords against a lot of experienced competitors when the cost per click is going to quickly eat up your budget. Make sure you use plenty of negative keywords and exact matches so you really narrow down the viewers to people you know will be interested in your product. Set up a budget so you don't login one day to see Google has spent drastically more than you were planning on them spending to send visitors your way.
3. Study Your Competitors - I like to use Keyword Elite for this from Brad Callen. This way you can find out which keywords your competitors are also bidding on so you won't be left out of the loop on successful campaigns. Also take a look at what seems to be working for them in terms of successful text combinations.
4. Don't Forget : Keep Testing - Rotate different ad groups to track which ones get the most clicks, and how many of those clicks are converting for you. Never stop testing because every little percentage increase in conversions means more money for you and your business!
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How to Get Indexed Faster By Google
Everyone wants to rank well in Google. A high listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs) can bring you a ton of traffic which hopefully will translate into you making a lot of money. If you have a new URL though, how can you make sure your site gets indexed faster by the major search engines? Take a look at these easy to follow guidelines and you'll be listed in the SERPs in no time at all.
Submit a Sitemap
You first need to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, this is valuable not only for adding your sitemap but also to get information in general on how Google views your site. Next you need to submit your XML sitemap. If you use WordPress then the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a must as it will update your sitemap and ping Google whenever you add content. If you use a different content management system then there is probably an automated tool you can use for that as well, which I would highly recommend. If you have to create your sitemap manually then run the program at Audit My PC and upload the generated sitemap to your web server before submitting it to Google.
Get Quality Links
Now I've talked about if you should buy links for SEO and I pretty much think you shouldn't, but if you want to get indexed fast then this is the only time I would consider it, if only for a short duration. I feel like this will help the Googlebot get to your site quickly, especially if you get a link from a high PR site. You can also use some of my suggestions on how to get more one-way links, but to sum that article up you basically need to write great content and then get noticed by other sites in your niche by commenting on their blogs or linking out to sites. Most of the time the site owner will at least check out your site and they think your content is relevant and adds value to their readers they will give you some link love in return.
Social Bookmarking
Another easy way to get links and to get indexed quickly is through social bookmarking. Digg is a very popular site where you can submit your content in the hopes of it catching on and getting to the front page. There is also plenty of other social sites like MySpace, StumpleUpon, and del.icio.us.
How do you get get your sites indexed? Let's hear about them in the comments.