Your Website Got Hit? How to Recover from Panda & Penguin

Google keeps updating their algorithm every now and then to ensure that webmasters are using the right SEO techniques to gain the rankings. If you got hit by Google Panda and Penguin, then you need to find what the “illness” is. When you know what Panda and Penguin targets when you violate their terms, you are in a better position to recover from penalties with great precision, effectively, and efficient.

Panda targets website and pages that have low-quality content, or “thin content.” But most importantly, they attack sites/users that publish the same low quality content on content farms “stuffed” with keywords and links but offer nothing in value for the reader.

On the other hand Google Penguin attacks sites that violate Google’s quality guidelines. Penguin would get a site in trouble that uses black hat SEO techniques, like keyword stuffing, or webspam, and cloaking. Other less suspicious tactics like inserting irrelevant links (link farming) going outside the page of the content would also force Penguin to block a site.

Hit by Google Panda?

If you were hit by the Google Panda, here are a couple of things you can do to recover from the slap.

Substitute thin content

Revisit your site and check for duplicated content on pages, particularly those pages that contain your main keywords and make it content rich. Read the whole content again as if you were a visitor to your site. The content must be easy to read, useful, fresh, and informative.

Warning: Don’t be tempted to use “spun” articles on your website. Instead, use only “original” and “fresh” content. You may save few bucks now but later run the risk of getting penalized, wasting more time, effort, and money.

Once you have identified thin content on your website, you can use Google’s Analytical tool to get more specific information of pages that usually get very few visitors each day. But the number may vary depending upon your website. For example, if your main pages usually have 100 visits a day, then you might want to consider the number below 20 a risk factor.

Likewise, use the ‘Disavow’ tool from the Google Webmaster tool to find unnatural links in a page and duplicate content and remove them. If you can’t do this yourself, hire a professional SEO expert.

Once you have identified these pages, immediately replace the existing content with a high quality – unique, fresh, and informative – content because many poorly written pages often get fewer visits.

Use Ads Sparingly

If your site does not contain any ads, then you are not likely to get hit by Panda. On the other hand, if your site has numerous ads, then you need to consider using them in an intelligent manner. Remember that the only reason a visitor wants to be on your website is to get useful information that solves their problems and not to get overwhelmed by looking ads promotions.

Add Quality Content and Avoid Shortcuts

As mentioned earlier, the only reason people come to your website is because of the content there and that’s what Google wants to happen. Nevertheless, you will find low quality sites ranking high with low quality information which leaves Google users disappointed. Since Google don’t want to tarnish their name, they introduced Panda. Shortcuts will only lead you to slap by Google. But if you are not sure if your content is high quality, or the links are broken, or basically contain blank pages, or if you don’t know how to do perform these tasks, then you may want to consult a trusted SEO expert to check your website and do a clean up. In this regard, the expert would be able to identify empty pages and broken links efficiently & effectively.

Hit By Penguin?

 Well, if you are hit by penguin, then there a couple of things that you will need to do in order to see yourself back at the top in rankings. Penguin has resurfaced again. Click here to read more about it.

Check and Clean Up your Backlinks

The first thing you need to do is remove any links that come from low quality sites. If you were buying links, then do away with them as sooner or later your site has a high chance of getting caught by Penguin.

 If you should buy links to get high rankings for your website and pages then make sure you know what you are buying. Ask your SEO expert to send you the list of websites your site will be linked to. These sites must be relevant to yours in terms of topic, and most importantly, have a high page ranking.

Don’t Over-Optimize!

Make sure that your website isn’t over-optimized with anchor text as links. While building links, try to use variety of keywords as anchor text for both internal and external links. Ensure the anchor text in the links fit naturally with the sentence and the context. If you don’t know how to do this, you may want to ask SEO personnel to your web pages. Web pages, after all, are meant for human readers.

Clean up both Internal and External Links

Make sure that all your links are working and there aren’t any broken links, and it doesn’t return a 404 error message after clicking. Although Google doesn’t penalize on this, nonetheless, it contributes to poor user experience and sooner or later will impact your website’s search engine performance.

Go Social

One way to increase your chances of evading penguin slap is by using the social networks especially Google +. Google always favors their own site and it’s good to work with them for your benefit. Google views links from social websites as natural and therefore will assume that people are happy with your website content. If your content is shared in social networks, then you are not at risk of being hit by Penguin. When you go social, you at least look more legitimate in the eyes of Google and not a fake enterprise or individual.

Summary of How to Recover from Panda & Penguin

In order to recover your website and pages from Panda and Penguin, you need to ensure providing good user experience, which includes publishing high quality content that are fresh, unique, and informative.

Likewise, avoid taking any shortcuts by publishing “duplicate” and “spammy” content that doesn’t add value to its readers and are only used for promotion. Never use black hat SEO technique to build links and influence the search engine rankings of your website. If Google suspects these activities, they’ll completely ban your site.

Instead, add quality content that adds value to its readers. Make the links inside each page natural and link them outside other sites that are relevant to your topics.