If you’ve been hit by Panda, there are various specific solution on how you can recover.
Note: take our 2-second survey to download a free copy of Ninjas’ Panda Whitepaper!
Please watch our previous two Panda episodes:
- Google Panda Update Explained: Panda 4.2 (Part 1) Jim & Ann Show
- Panda 4.2 (Part 2) Signals You Should Be Looking at: Jim and Ann Show
We are covering the solutions as well as some examples and case studies in our video:
First thing to remember is: If you were hit by Panda, whatever you do, you’ll have to wait for the next Panda update to see if what you did has actually worked and if you were able to recover.
Google Panda: Diagnostics
Panda 4.2 was announced as “slowly rolling out”, so probably affected sites will be *slowly* losing rankings.
Also, quoting a WebmasterWorld post:
you don’t have to have a Panda-penalized site to get caught up in roller-coaster ride that is Panda.
Meaning that, even if your site was in any way affected by Panda, your rankings may still be affected by other sites moving up and down because of the Panda.
Google Panda: Solutions
We do lots of Panda reports here at Internet Marketing Ninjas diagnosing Panda and coming up with various custom solutions.
The first step in trying to diagnose why your site was hit by Panda is going to your analytics and trying to identify content, link structure and usability issues:
- Link paths for the site
- What areas of the site bring in different types of users (how their intent may be different and how you can better serve them)
- What are different types and templates throughout the site
- What sections of the site have fallen and when
Tip! If you are hit by Panda, everything goes down but some sections should have fallen more than the others. For example, some of the sections have fallen by 20% and one section has fallen by 80%:
The latter is the one that must have tripped the Panda filter and dragged the whole site down. And those other pages that have dropped 20% of rankings may have fallen because they are linking those worst pages. That’s a great way to identify the most problematic pages.
Another thing to do it to line up analytics data with keyword rankings analysis using tools like SEMrush and SlyFu.
We have a private tool that exports keyword rankings data before and after the penalty and we can order them by which ones were hit most.
*You Should Make Your Site Smaller… Much Smaller and Flatter*
Look at your landing pages Google used to bring (or still brings) visitors to: these are the pages of value. Everything else should go.
Maybe some pages should remain their for the users but Google should be blocked form those pages through Robots.txt
[Even if we are told to create pages for users and not to think about search engines, sometimes you have to think about search engines!]
If you have a hundred-thousand-page websites with many levels, you have to cut down on those levels making your site flatter.
- You can block certain levels with Robots.txt
- You can deindex certain levels with Noindex meta tag
- You can remove certain pages
- You can combine certain pages
- You can use canonical tags to show Google which page should not be counted
- You can move certain folders to subdomains
Think how you can make your site MUCH smaller: If you have lost 80% of traffic following Panda Update, be prepared to make your site 80% smaller and flatter.
Think Differently about Your Site Copy
Your content throughout the site should all be different and unique: Not just unique in words. It should not be templated: Don’t instruct your writers create a certain amount or words, paragraphs etc. Avoid content patterns and templates.
Panda-proof your content:
- Think entities: e.g. if you are writing about a city, make sure to include unique landmarks that can be found there, historic figures that are associated with those places.
- Make sure to include external links to trusted sources (not just home pages).
Avoid making your content “look” different by spinning or automatically replacing words with data-base-driven keys. Google is very good at analyzing sets of pages and it will find similar patterns no matter how much you think your pages are different. Your content should be actually unique, not “pretend to be unique”.
Avoid fast-growing websites because Google will get suspicious: There’s no way a website can go from 10,000 to 100,000 pages and be able to support those 100,000 pages.
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Watch the whole video here: Google Panda Recovery Tips and Solutions: Jim and Ann Show
