New Panda tweek

25 Apr 12 2:36 pm

I suspect that google tracks information about how people act when they visit your site.

-how long they stay
-do they scroll down
-click through to other pages
-click off or hit the back space
-weather they bookmark or share your site before leaving.

Alot of people who are surfing the web are signed into google in one way of the other, so Google knows what the searchers like and don't like.

I also think in the future the only links that will have SEO value are links that actually get impressions on Google and are actually clicked by people to get to your site.

Rereading the blog post it looks as if the rules on keyword density are changing and over use of the key work may actually hurt your ranking.

The web will belong to true bloggers soon.

26 Apr 12 4:14 am

based on the comments I saw on the post, it is not looking good. but then, my rankings mostly went up so I am not complaining.

26 Apr 12 9:41 am

i can already see changes...my sites are full in quality and while they have backlinks, I haven't taken the time to buff a few of them up ... but so far it isn't all that needed because they are sky rocketing in the rankings. It's crazy!

26 Apr 12 5:54 pm

gradyp wrote:I think you may be right, JC, because my site where I've been getting a higher bounce rate was definitely more affected. Though I still don't have my traffic up where I want it, I'm beginning to look to see if I can figure out what can help the bounce rate on that site. James gave me one idea that, while still too early to tell, may help. Then again, some of the changes may reflect that I'm getting fewer tire kickers and starting to get more "return visitors" now that I'm posting regularly again and interacting with other people. For me, at least, it's still too early to tell the effect the latest tweak will have on my site.

The biggest tire kicker ever!

27 Apr 12 2:45 pm

Thanks JC

This explains alot.

I almost cried when I saw my traffic collapse the other day.

I was averaging 60+ visitors per day untill 4/25/12 when it dropped down to 14 and then down to 10 on 4/26/12.

I found out that I dropped from #1 on google to #2 for my main 2 keywords. But that was just the beginning, I found that I dropped for other keywords also going from the top three down to page 2 or worse.

After I calmed myself down I looked for a reason and found this article http://www.webpronews.com/webspam-and-panda-updates-does-seo-still-matter-2012-04 .

From what I gather these changes might be drastic at first but will come to a happy medium after a while so i'm not going back to the keyboard just yet. It is boiling down to quality content (as we know) but I think that they are looking for even higher quality than we might think.

As JC said, the google stats should make a BIG difference in a sites ranking. I already took down my above the fold ad on my homepage a week ago to drop my bounce rate which went from 67% down to 50%.

I think that shear size of a site ( with very high quality content ) will help the individual pages rank well as a whole and not just treating each page as its own entity.

Anyway, I think this change will help us overall as we will have more control since the on-page S.E.O. content quality will make a bigger difference and we might not need to do as much link building.

Not sure but maybe.

Never Give Up!!!
Paul

28 Apr 12 2:30 am

Today I have just discovered that I have been hit hard by these changes. I had a look at the new #1 for one of the biggest keywords I have been targeting and found that it is a press release with zero PR that uses spun content and offers very little value to the user.

What is more, they do just about everything possible to stop you leaving the page. Meanwhile I have spent many hours trying to create a great user experience as Google preaches and I disappear from the rankings for that keyword almost completely.

I am disappointed and angry with Google ... They are full of ****.

30 Apr 12 10:29 am

There are so much happening lately with Google's updates and individual's traffic situation. Although this "change" from Google is nothing new to all of us, still we are caught up by surprise. This is because most of use highly depend on how we can "outsmart" Google.

While I feel the same frustration and desperation on how to bring traffic back (as I also have one blog suffering from a major drop since G released its new algo), I suppose the best thing to do is to accept this change and reconstruct how we do our link building and SEO.

30 Apr 12 12:36 pm

Hi Greg,

There is so much to digest on what you just said. I must agree that Google cannot play God (not forever). Although it hurts a lot to be back at the bottom and start everything all over again, it will be just a matter of time before everyone figured out how to get on top pages of Google again.

It will be interesting though on which businesses will survive and which ones won't. With better Panda released, is it possible that there are niches that won't survive the change? Additionally, Google firmly holds that quality sites would mean sites that have informative and helpful content. So what about businesses or sites that are not really into providing "content"?

30 Apr 12 2:48 pm

Great replies everyone!

My main site has completely crashed in the S.E. rankings since the penguin update. So I have been reading alot of articles about this new update and this is what I have found.

It seems that this update has really screwed up and is not doing at all what it was supposed to do. It was estimated that only about 1% of search results would be effected. It turns out that nearly 9% have been effected and many top notch sites have been killed while many garbage sites have gone to the top.

It's my hunch that google will not leave things as they are and rethink this change.

The penguin update was supposed to identify and reward quality sites and punish "Black Hat" or " Webspam" sites when in reality it is rewarding authority and brand "powerhouse" sites and killing smaller sites (less than 10 pages ) just because they are small.

Now brands, they are really dominating. They started to really dominate the rankings after the first few Google updates last October. But now; they’ve taken over. If you Google a review on any kind of physical product, 90% of the time the first two pages will be full of brands.

Big brand review sites like Epinions and Viewpoint for example. No longer are there many independent review sites built by Internet Marketers. That side of Internet Marketing appears to be very much screwed right now.

Brands and massive authority sites are dominating. Little niche sites have been mostly wiped out and some authority sites are still ranking. But the majority of all niche sites have lost a substantial percentage of their traffic.

Overall it’s not a great time to be doing SEO unless you’re a brand or gigantic site. I honestly think people should lay low for a little while and focus on other traffic generation strategies. Most importantly I believe it’s time to dive into paid traffic.

As far as google penguins real clean-up efforts, they are cracking down big time on keyword stuffing ( going for more than 5 keywords on any 1 post). Link schemes (link wheels,blog networks, buying or selling links,etc.). Cloaking (mostly keyword cloaking), “sneaky” redirects or “doorway” pages but not legit 301 redirects. And of course duplicate content.

Some of the articles are pushing a new age of PPC and PPV as being the best way to stabilize regular traffic (if you have the money and expertise to do it). Others are hoping that things will go back to they way they were (not likely) and some people are saying that we need to start from scratch with new sites that have to be huge authority sites in order to rank well.

In a nut shell the over-all opinion is to keep your sites very clean cut and don't use any kind of link building strategy or schemes or networks, just write super high quality content with less than 1% keyword density (even as low as .2% or so, just title and 1 or 2 other times) and hope that it is good enough to get you good rankings with a solid link platform.

There are bound to be more of these google updates in the future so we might as well do everything absolutely perfect from now on. If you site has been effected by penguin like mine has, we just have to wait and see what will happen, I have stopped everything for now until I learn more.

Sorry that this got a little long winded but I wanted to share what I have read.

Never Give Up!!!
Paul

01 May 12 1:55 pm

I'm sorry, I did not phrase that part well. What I mean is, not to build links in any type of fishy of questionable way. Keep your link building on the up and up, no blog networks, wheels or spammy typs of link building.

Sorry if that came across wrong.

Never Give Up!!!
Paul

03 May 12 6:24 pm

This 24th April update is Called New Penguin Update...it has effected around 3% query in total...

12 May 12 11:02 pm

I haven't been affected at all by either of the google updates and believe it is because I have high quality articles with a lot of information. I am on page 1 and 2 for many keyword phrases but I still look to see what the sites are like that are in front of me and there are still sites that are crap there without much to offer.

On the other hand what in the world is google going to do about sites from companies that make certain types of products. I mean if I made nuts and bolts what the hell do they think I am supposed to put on my site. Should I put articles about how to use nuts and bolts and how to figure out which nuts and bolts are going to be best for my use.

If that is what google wants that would be stupid, People looking for something like that on the internet already know what they want and just want to buy and they want a page that they can just say I want to buy 100 9/16th nuts and bolts. I have never thought google has done a good job of putting the best sites up first.

Even thought my main site is doing well in SERP's I still don't get the traffic I think I should be getting for where I am. I use to think I knew what people wanted because I put my site together based on what I wanted when I was looking for the type of information I now provide but anymore I think I don't have a clue and that google is putting me on page one for real off beat things that I am not trying to rank for at all.

But I just cant give up I spent far too much time and energy putting this thing together. My other problem is that I want to branch out into some other areas to try and make more money but don't have any idea of where to look and what niche to get into next. Mark

14 May 12 2:30 am

Hey Mark,

I'm wondering if there's some way you could get some credibility elements onto your pages?

Maybe testimonials from travelers who have used your site? Maybe your number of trips or a map with "pins" of the spots you've visited? Or some travel association or other membership emblems? Or Italian city or region medallions?

Cheers!
_jim coe