The Panda Update

Who Am I?

Co-author of The Art of SEOPresident of Stone Temple Consulting

20+ person SEO and PPC firmTrainer for Instant E-TrainingFounder of Web Site Publishing Companies

Publish web sites, grow them, then sell them2 significant exits so far

On Twitter: @stonetemple

What was it all about?

• Panda targeted at content farms?• Broader than that• Real Question: How good is your content?

– User engagement (compared to competition)– Sameness/me-too-ishness– Content Quality

1. User Engagement

Bounce Rate

• Google Analytics– Did the user view only one page?

• Google Toolbar– One page? How long on page?

• Search Results Interaction– Time between click through to back to results

Time on Site

• Hard to measure with Analytics– Measures time from 1st page view to start of last

page view

• Easier to measure with Google Toolbar– Can see when they go to another site

Pages Per Visit

• Easy to measure in analytics• Easy to measure with the Google Toolbar

Search Results Interaction

Chrome Blocklist Extension

Site Previews

Social Metrics

Social News Sites

2. Is this you?

Sameness

Do we reallyNeed 2.54MillionResults?

3. Thin content

Must Find Ways to Add ValueManufacturer Supplied Text?

4. Myths

No way to get whitelisted

http://searchengineland.com/google-weve-made-no-significant-changes-to-the-farmer-update-66591

There is no blacklist

5. This is a Fundamental Shift

How Ranking Used to Work24% Trust/Authority of Domain22% Link Popularity of Page20% InBound Anchor Text15% Keyword Usage7% Traffic / Click-Through Data6% Social Graph Metrics5% Registration / Hosting Data

Source SEOmoz RankingFactors Survey

What it Might Look Like Now

21%

19%

11%18%

7%

20%

4%21% Trust/Authority of Domain19% Link Popularity of Page18% InBound Anchor Text11% Keyword Usage7% Traffic / Click-Through Data20% Engagement Metrics4% Registration / Hosting Data

Source: ME

What to do?

Kill Weak Pages - FAST

Or Repair Them

How To Repair?

• User Generated Content– Not enough traffic? Try Facebook Contests to get

it

• Replace thin content with deep content (or at least original content)

• Offer unique tools

Address Engagement

• Measure It

• Improve it

How To Improve?• Enticing cross links• Great tools / content• Videos• Contests, prizes, surveys, …• Figure out how to get users to spend

more time with your site!• If all else fails: Disable the back button

of their browser

Be Surgical

Know the Goal

Thank You!

Eric Engeeenge@stonetemple.com@stonetemple(508) 485-7751www.stonetemple.com For a One Sheet SEO Checklist, email me, or

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