Google Penguins and Panda Updates Explained by the PurpleFruit Geek

Run the Penguins and Panda are coming

Most of the updates last year had been focused on Google Panda.  The Search Engine Optimization community had been in a buzz for the past few weeks with the latest updates from Google which is named Google Penguin.

Raising the Bar

Both the Penguin and Panda updates in SEO are said to be good agents in improving the quality of the search results.  Panda update refers to the signals directed in terms of relevance and through this the site could indicate that it belongs to high page results.  Google is assessing the signals like the bounce rate of the page, click-through rate, content amount above the fold, and the number of clicks that the page is getting from the results.

Panda updates are designed for targeting pages that are not just spam but not of great quality too.  Through this a site could be penalized, that means the pages of the website that are flagged for having few contents, then the entire site could be affected.  Panda is also designed to stop the scrappers or the sites that republish content of other companies.

Web Spam

Google states that Penguin is the essential algorithm change that is targeted at webspam.  This change will reduce the ranking of the sites that violates the present quality guidelines of Google.  Most Search Engine Optimization community speculated other contributing factors to Penguin such as the overuse of exact-match domains, exact-match anchor text that is aggressive, blog spam and article marketing which are of low quality and keyword stuffing in the outbound and internal links.

The SEO black hat tactics such as keyword stuffing (a long considered webspam) may get a site trouble but the less obvious tactics may also cause Penguin to flag your website.  The best thing to do for site owners is to frequently check the Google Webmaster Accounts that they have for the messages coming from Google warning about their past spam activities and potential penalty.

It is always important to note that Panda is also an algorithm update and not manually done.  Never panic if you find a down turn in the traffic. It happens when a major Google update is raised even for the past years.

If you think that your website may have an SEO penalty as the result of either Google Penguin or Google Panda updates, why not get in touch and see what the PurpleFruit geek and the team can do to help.