Panda 4.0 Update
If you haven’t already heard, Google has recently announced the Panda 4.0 search engine algorithm update which means even more changes to the already complicated practice of SEO. Here is what Panda 4.0 may mean for your website and what you should do about it.
Panda History
The original Panda algorithm was designed to help high quality content sites to receive the best rankings, while lower quality sites are lowered or eliminated from the search engines. So fare these updates have made it basically impossible for sites utilize black hat or copied techniques to rank higher in the search engines.
What’s New With Panda 4.0
Panda 4.0 specifically was rolled out last week and the effects are already being seen. At the same time as the update changes affect the search engine results, the algorithm to target spam search queries has also gone into affect. This could make it difficult to determine just which results are being affected by Panda 4.0.
SEOs have not yet come to a consensus as to what results are affected, however at this point it looks like the best option is to avoid trying to rank for search terms that typically result in high numbers of spammy queries. This should be done until it is determined exactly what was and what was not affected.
Payday Loans Google Update
Google decided to target spammy queries because of examples such as searches for the keyword phrase “payday loans” which previously resulted in a high number of spam results and irrelevant content. In addition, the news was also made available that international queries are more affected by these changes that English language queries. Google said that it is working hard to target international spam.
These changes were initiated back in June of 2013, however the changes are being seem across all results this month. No longer will website owners be able to rank for what are considered to be high value terms by using black hat techniques. This is also a likely method of requiring website owners to use Google’s paid advertising in order to rank for these terms instead of being able to do it for free via organic search methods.
What to Do Next
In terms of what you should do next, it would likely be a good idea to simply just wait a few days and continue to check your website’s rankings. If you have being trying to rank for terms that are likely to be targeted by this update, now would probably be a good time to take another look at your search engine optimization strategy to consider whether it is time for a big change.
If you are concerned that the methods that you were using previously to rank your site could hurt you now, draw up a completely overview of your link profile and on-page SEO strategies so that you can see where the bad links and bad SEO practices are so that you can fix them.
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