3 Steps To Recover Quickly From Panda
In case you missed it, a couple of weeks ago Google released another major Panda update. If you’re new here Panda is the code name given to an algorithm update that focuses on “quality” issues. I use the term quality loosely as it is what Google is deciding as quality not what you or I may think quality means.
Google’s Quality Control Destroying Lives
“As of last week my staff are standing around doing nothing. Business has dried up overnight, Google have punished us and we don’t why” It’s not the first time I’ve had these sorts of conversations. I’ve had a few like that this week. Typically I hear this from business owners after a Google update. In the case of one business owner he is about to lay off staff because traffic from Google has dried up over the last couple of weeks. Relying purely on Google for your traffic is a conversation for another time, if you need to recover from a Panda here are the steps to identify it and move on.
1. Be sure it’s Panda and not something else.
Quite often clients will tell us that their ranking drop has been caused by a Google update but sometimes it’s because the client has done an update that Google does not like. In the case of the latest update it happened on the 20th of May. Go to your search queries section in Webmaster tools. If you see a steep drop off on or about that date, it’s most likely that you have been hit by a Panda update. If your drop off is not exactly on that date chances are your traffic drop is not directly related to this latest Panda update.
2. Isolate potential quality issues
I don’t care what Google or anyone else tells you. Look for weird stuff happening with your site and get rid of it. This includes; content duplication, lots of 404s, broken sitemaps, weird server errors like 500s, 501s or 400s & 403s. These are all signs of bigger issues with your site. Make sure you check the Google index with site: search. In the case of the client who I spoke with yesterday I they have around 7,000 SKUs but over 43,000 pages indexed. This is a major Panda signal.
3. Fix the problems and watch the traffic return
The good news is you can return from these sorts of problems quickly if you get onto them and fix them. Below is a case in point.
The major issues with this client’s site was simply duplication. Google was crawling WordPress tags and categories which was resulting in too many pages on the site being crawled.
If you need a review of your site let me know and I’ll see if we can fit you in.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
