I’m constantly hearing about this…
That damn Google Panda update and how it keeps obliterating people’s online businesses. The other month I wrote a post about the Google Panda update and how it “ruined” my online business. The thing still gets over 100 visitors every day, it’s popular.
That tells me everyone is still having problems recovering from last year’s Google Panda updates. And… I understand, I really do.
I too was hit by the panda. In fact, around 60 of my own personal websites took a massive slap to the face in rankings. In other words; I lost the majority of my traffic overnight.
…All because of a few stupid changes Google rolled out in a Google Panda update. Anyway, many small business owners, webmasters, bloggers, large companies and marketers are still trying to recover from the Google Panda updates.
Ever since I did get hit; I’ve been working on getting my sites back and I finally figured it out a few weeks ago. There’s a lot more to recovering from Google Panda than what I’ll go through here, but I wanted to address one of the main culprits; backlinks.
…For those of you who know your shit in the SEO department; I’m very aware of the fact Google Panda updates weren’t aimed at hitting sites with dodgy link profiles. BUT – after all the horror stories I’ve heard it seems like thousands of sites that did get hit were using super black hat link building techniques.
The other sites that also got hit – all had on-site problems. So here are just 5 ways to recover from Google Panda updates or bad backlinks.
1. Clean Up Your Site
Google Panda hit sites for countless reasons.
The most common reason of all was because of site quality and user experience. Basically, Google started paying close attention to what users were doing on websites.
How long they spent on them, how many pages they visited, whether they shared or bookmarked them and more. Obviously Google was paying attention to those factors before, but it seems they’re using those user experience factors to hammer down on low quality sites.
That’s why if you want to last in the online marketing world; you need to build super high quality, attractive and informative websites.
If your bounce rate, average page views/visit or average time spent on site sucks; you need to clean up your site. Think about giving it a face lift. A new design or layout maybe? Read my last post on recovering from Google Panda for 15 tips for cleaning up your site.
2. Wait It Out
This is the lazy strategy; but it works to some degree. Sometimes time is all it takes to get your old rankings back. Google has trust issues. If you do the slightest thing to piss Google off; he’ll treat you like a piece of shit, have zero respect for your site and fuck you. By “fuck you” I mean demolish your search engine rankings.
Now trust can’t be instantly regained, it takes time for Google to forgive you. So if you’ve suddenly built 10,000 spammy backlinks and been penalized; a good 2 months might do the trick. If you decide to do nothing whatsoever it’ll only take longer to get your rankings back. Meaning you’re better using the next strategy.
3. Build Great Links
Backlinks make the search engines go round. If Google knocks you down a few pages because of spammy backlinks – you should build better links. It seems like the logical answer right?
Now let’s say you built 100,000 comment links and got penalized. To re-gain your rankings you should build higher quality links. While at the same time keep building spammy links. Let me explain…
If you’ve been building low quality links for a while and Google penalizes you… You shouldn’t stop building them. Most people stop building the crappy links and start building super high quality links.
If you do that – Google’s caught you red handed. Instead you need to slowly decrease the number of spammy links you’re building on a daily basis. Let’s say 5000 comment links a day is what killed your rankings.
On day 2 of your new link building campaign you could build 4900, on day 3 you could build 4800 and so on until you’re building a sensible 500 or so each day. All meanwhile focusing the majority of your energy on high quality backlinks like:
- Web2.0 Sites
- High Page Rank Article Directories
- High Quality Blog Networks – Not Spun Content Crap
- Guest Blogging
- Social SEO
4. Get Shot Of The Pages
Doing this may sound a little hostile, but it definitely works. If you’ve had a load of backlinks built to 1 or several of your internal pages; consider deleting them. If all your spammy links are pointing at pages that don’t exist, Google can’t penalize you.
So if you’ve had a sudden influx of links to internal pages and you’re certain they got you penalized; consider deleting the pages. Of course, this strategy doesn’t work if you’ve build the dodgy links to your home page.
5. Take A More Social Approach
If you didn’t know; Google has been using social signals from sites like Facebook and Twitter to influence rankings. Google is actually becoming the new social site. They are going to do whatever it takes to remain the number 1 on the Internet. That means becoming A LOT more social…
Checkout the new search results, they just came in last night! Google is now indexing Google Plus posts. Checkout what happens when I search on Google:
If I could show you the rest of the screen, there are more personal results. Two Google Plus posts on the first page, image results from my Google Plus friends and People & Pages on Google Plus related to “Internet Marketing”. My point is the search results are becoming more social and backlinks shouldn’t be your main priority.
Anyway, social SEO works! By social SEO I mean getting links/shares from social media sites. Basically syndication and sharing of your site’s content. The more people who share your stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus; the better your rankings will be.
…I know A LOT of Internet Marketers and the ones who run highly success websites or blogs have all taken the social approach.
…They’ve stopped building so many backlinks and have started focusing on social media. It’s simple; build a tribe.
A tribe of followers who read everything you publish and share all of your content. You can start building your tribe by building an email list of subscribers. Or even use simple RSS feeds. In order to make this work; you need a blog and you need to post lots of content. That’s the option you have. Ramp up the amount of content you publish, build less links and use social media.
Email your subscribers sending them to your new posts and encourage your readers to share your stuff on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Besides that setup some auto-syndication stuff with Ping.fm and Hootsuite. Ping.fm allows you to automatically syndicate your blog posts onto over 30 social networks/bookmarking sites.
Well – you have to actually login and submit your posts once and Ping.fm will do the rest. Using Hootsuite you can plug your blog’s RSS feed into Ping.fm and have all your posts automatically syndicated as they get published. Let’s say you setup 10 Ping.fm accounts, that’s over 300 instantaneous social backlinks hitting your posts as you publish them.
So…
- Build A Tribe (Email List Of Subscribers)
- Post Lots Of Content
- Drive Subscribers To New Posts
- Encourage Social Sharing
- Use Ping.fm + Hootsuite
- Get Active On Social Networks
There are many ways to “socialize” your site. Trust me, social activity will help you recover from Google Panda Updates, bad backlinks and any form of penalization you may have encountered!
P.S. What do you think about the whole Google Panda fiasco? Let me know in the comments below.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Just tweeted this article. A lot dentists have been hurt by the Panda update and the narrowing of what a city is geographically to the very center of the city. Also, thanks for the tip about Ping.fm, as I will try that for my blog posts.
Dr Pauley´s last [type] ..Bellevue Dentist Discusses Diet Candy
Yeah – countless offline busineses have been hurt badly by the updates. The social syndication with Ping.fm etc really works – use it.
Sounds like it all goes back to high quality content. Content seems to rule now and that’s a good thing. Thanks for the tidbits.
Yeah. Content quality “rules” a lot more than it did before the updates started. But high quality backlinks are still essential along with social syndication.
I’m very badly affected by the last Panda update. Hope my blog recover’s soon. I analyzed links and I guess some dodgy links maybe the reason.
Sagar´s last [type] ..Blogger Redirecting Visitors to Country Specific URLs