taming the panda - mitch fournier · taming the panda google didn’t just change an algorithm –...
TRANSCRIPT
Taming the Panda
Google didn’t just change an algorithm – they changed the web
Duncan Morris, 2011
SEOs are problem solvers at heart.
We should be so proud! We can get any old shit to rank
Matt Cutts: It was like, “What’s the bare minimum that I can do that’s not spam?”
Whole businesses relied on advertising revenue from low value content
Quality Content Evidence that content is important
Google Webmaster Central - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349
Give visitors the information they’re looking for: Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do
Google Webmaster Central - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361
Little or no original content One of the most important steps in improving your site's ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information
What’s been done
Google May day ripped out many pages with little value. Mainly by removing pages with no unique content such as category pages.
May day – Matt Cutts “this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries”
http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054
Panda relies on data captured as a result off engineering breakthroughs.
Caffeine “...Caffeine revamped the entire indexing system to make it even easier for engineers to add signals.”
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1
I’d wager good money ‘algorithm chasing’ SEO’s are behind most of these
The day of the Panda February 24th 2011
The day of the Panda February 24th 2011
Biggest algorithm change in years that targeted site quality
We asked our raters questions like: •Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card •Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids
Takeaway point: Google cares about ‘how users interact with” a site
The algorithm addressed 84% of the top sites reported from the Chrome extension
Also see: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-more-of-what-you.html
Google are still trying to find a way for users to tell them the sites they like
The Panda strikes again: April 11th
If Google gets this right, this should be a big win for genuine businesses
This isn’t so much an algorithm change as it is a mindset change
Manipulating the signals may become harder than earning them.
Quality content: the 3rd ranking signal
Quality content doesn’t go far enough
Valuable content: the 3rd ranking signal
Can you recover from a Panda attack
Based on our testing, we’ve found the algorithm is very accurate at detecting site quality. If you believe your site is high-quality and has been impacted by this change, we encourage you to evaluate the different aspects of your site extensively
Paraphrased: We are super confident we are right.
Paraphrased: The quality of a site doesn’t change overnight, so we don’t need to run the algorithms that often
But first, a word of warning
“Google has said:”
“Yes we do compute and use author authority”
“So you should look at how you can earn more followers on twitter”
Hmm, Duncan says I need to get more twitter followers
I didn’t mean it like that..
Don’t optimise for the metric. Earn the metric
How to avoid being erroneously hit
‘how to build up a history of quality’
Do you have pages of low value?
Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content. “Wysz” http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=360
Do you have pages with no results (reviews / products / coupons)
... prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines – via www.mattcutts.com/blog/empty-review-sites
If your site is predominantly low value pages, be careful with UGC.
UGC... User Generated Crap? Create an internal metric for quality and be rigorous in removing anything that doesn’t surpass it.
The Panda algorithm is attempting to match a human intuition when it comes to judging the quality of a site.
Action: Speed up your site
A 5 second speed up (to ~2 seconds) resulted in a 25% increase in page views, a 7-12% increase in revenue, and a 50% reduction in hardware.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/velocity-making-your-site-fast.html
Action: No really, Speed up your site
http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/07/27/wikia-fast-pages-retain-users/
Page Load Time
Page Load
Time
http://www.google.com/support/analyticshelp/bin/answer.py?answer=1205784
Action: JFDI already..
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/optimizing-page-speed-actionable-tips-for-seos-and-web-developers
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ninejjcohidippngpapiilnmkgllmakh
Do you have excessive advertising?
Do you have excessive advertising?
According to the adwords policy. A landing page is not considered arbitrage if...
30% of the browser display area consists of unique and relevant content
The browser display area used for ads doesn’t exceed the browser display area used for unique and relevant content.
http://andrewhansen.name/affiliate-marketing/google-checkmates-me-but-reveals-internal-secrets/
What does your site look like at various screen sizes?
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine or book?
Getting it right long term
Building your social brand
Action: Ensure your employees have the authority to become famous
http://twitter.zappos.com/employees
They get scraped to hell
They are quoted all the time
Look what happens when you are an expert in a niche
Action: Use social media as a company notice board.
Google, Facebook and LinkedIn are all trying to create a social graph
http://www.6smarketing.com/facebook-edgerank-algorithm/
http://socialgraph-resources.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/findyours.html
Well Look at that. Google knows this Rand Fishkin is the same as that Rand Fishkin.
This relies on rel=“me”
Tie your profiles together
Tip: If you can, ensure your accounts use the same email address and username
Getting it right long term
Some more tips
Tip: Use CRO to encourage people to interact with you and your site.
http://www.abtests.com/ , http://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons
Tip: Look at what content has engaged users so far and replicate
https://connect.postrank.com/
Tip: Content doesn’t always mean text. Videos are awesome too.
@duncanmorris
www.distilled.net
Videos are now available of our #linklove
conference in London and New Orleans:
www.distilled.net/store
You’re doing it wrong.