If you are worried about getting hit by the next Panda update, it will be wise on your part to take some precautionary steps before the Google Panda actually hits you hard. In 2014, Google will be laying emphasis on companies with robust and effective content marketing strategies. So, what changes you have to make largely depends on where your business stands in relation to the active content marketing strategy.
If you have just started to move in content marketing direction, it is now time to commit as well as diversify. In case you have not started yet, you need to take a plunge at the earliest. It is imperative to always remember that with Google Panda, content serves to be the most crucial thing in your site. Without quality content, you cannot think of outranking anyone on the search engine. So, your content should be packed with true value. Those fluff sentences are dangerous, spammed articles are deadly.
Take care of your content
Quality of your content is very important. Readers and audiences want to know where your content comes from. In case it is your own ideas and experiences, you can put it that way. But in case you are drawing on some outside sources, graphics or case studies, you need to cite the sources. This easily helps alleviate all possibilities of duplicate content flags and that too when you are using quotations directly in your information.
Social media and Google+
As Social media has become a necessity in today’s time, apart from strengthening your presence in the social media market, it is also important that you invest in Google+. A recent study from Moz stated that Google+ plays a very significant role in giving powerful SEO rankings to your site. So, you need to focus on establishing Google Authorship of the content you display. This authorship will further help you bring your content together and will play a crucial role in SERPs and strengthening the author rank.
Quality linking is vital
Moving ahead, to prepare your site for the next Panda update, you need to remember that links are crucial factor for ranking at all times. In case you are linking to some bad sites, these links may count against you at some time or the other. Also, if you are linking too much, these links will also count against you. So, try to be choosy and cautious while picking links to include and in case you are in some kind of doubt, simply choose to nofollow the links.
Use guest blogging for your benefit
Guest blogging has truly exploded in past years and it is still going to be one of the most useful means of creating quality inbound links, brand exposure and traffic in the year 2014. But it is truly critical that you are making quality content and using stringent criteria while choosing the target sites.
Reduce your bounce rate
To prepare your site for the next Panda news, try minimizing the bounce rate. Bounce rate is basically a Panda metric where high bounce rate tells the search engine that your content is actually not keeping the people around. And if the content is not keeping people around, there is no value from it and is therefore demoted. So, try doing everything that you can to encourage the clicks through to the other pages instead of having bounced users.
Last but not least, you need to remember that Google Panda is a penalty for the whole site which simply means that few poor quality or low quality pages will get your entire site penalized. Though it is possible to get your site recovered, it is easier to avoid the problems in first place. Ensure that you are putting more focus on the content that you produce and to keep your audience interested in it. So, if you keep the above mentioned tips in mind, you will be safe from the Panda updates, irrespective of how strongly they hit the sites.
