Google Panda Update / Farmer Update

Recently Google has updated its search algorithm. This update is named Panda Update A.K.A Farmer Update and is considered as one of the major updates after Google caffeine. Initially it is enrolled in US region only but very soon it will be enrolled worldwide.

Many webmasters have complained the traffic to their site from Google search has been dropped to almost 40%. Google has also manually picked some sites and devalued them. Here I will talk about general factors affecting sites. The debate is still going on of what to do and what not to do.

Factors Affecting Sites after Panda Update:

Low Quality Backlinks:

Yes, the quality of backlinks can affect your website. Instead of going on quantity you should focus on quality of backlinks as well. Kristi Hines of Search Engine Watch has made some good explanations for High Quality Backlinks in her article.

Content is King:

Still the high quality content is the king in your SEO. It is better to focus on good content now. Avoid content duplication to the maximum level. Don’t over stuff your content with keywords and try to make it looks natural.

Internal Site Structure:

Your site should be with clear navigation and usability. Internal site structure plays an important role in keyword rankings. You should control of what information you would like to be crawled and avoid any internal pages duplications. As Panda Update is more on content duplication so you should be careful with it.

Sites Affected by Panda Update

Panda Update is also named Farmer Update because it has chased link farms and content farms on the large scale. Sites affected most by this update are either content aggregator sites or affiliate sites. Again, the reason is duplication.

It was happening lately that on some keywords affiliate sites were appearing on top positions. (Good optimization is also the reason.) But this update has made all affiliate marketers upset as now actual sites are on top for all their keywords instead of affiliates.

Find If Your Site is affected by Panda Update:

It is not necessary that only content scrapper or affiliate sites will be affected. The affect may impact on other sites too. Below mentioned are the few tips to find if your website is chased down. Google is flexible enough that it has given an option to let Google know if your website has been affected wrongly.

Drop in Traffic

If you are experiencing sudden drop in traffic of organic search from United States then you might be a victim of Panda Update. This drop may be for a complete website, particular page types or for any specific query.

Google Panda update survival guide by Mark Nunney in Wordtracker Academy will be helpful in getting your site out of the negative impact.