Post-Panda SEO

As many of you probably know already, search engine optimization, more commonly known as SEO, is the process used to improve the visibility of a website in search engines. As search engines have become so integrated into daily life, SEO has become not only an incredibly useful tool for webmasters trying to get ahead of the curve but also a huge industry. In March of this year though, Google changed the game with “Panda.” Today I’m going to give you some tips for improving your post-Panda search results, but first, let’s talk a little about how Panda works. Very basically, Google has upped their ability to scale machine learning algorithms, which allows them to now compare websites using a number of things, such as projections of what their “quality raters” like and usage metrics. The sites people like more go up; the sites people don’t go down.

So how can SEO’s deal with this to keep their websites high on search engines? Well here are a few tips:

• Improve user experience and design. Obviously this is nothing new, but with Panda it has become all the more important. It’s become that much more vital for your website to flow well and look great; otherwise it will suffer the consequences.
• Improve your content quality. Panda is programmed to recognize formatting with the sole intention of SEO and consequently pushes such sites down. You need to make your content really distinguishable from other sites; if Panda doesn’t think people would want to care about it or share it, it won’t.
• Lastly, you need to optimize usage metrics; i.e. you have to improve how people are using your website. If they’re not staying for long, or are only looking at one of your pages, Panda will penalize you for that. On the other hand, increase your click-through and browsing rates and you may be rewarded.