The Google Panda Update is the latest in the series of Page Rank updates designed by Google to monitor their ranking system of the World Wide Web. This update has left a lot of online marketers wrong-footed with a lot “previous practices” now being penalized by a severe drop in the Page Rank.

Factors affecting Page Rank post the Google Panda Update

Page Rank is a simple webpage ranking algorithm designed by Google to keep a record of the authoritative sites present online with the Google Panda Update giving the result. A Page Rank is the result of a number of variables such as:
1. Content:
This is the MOST important aspect of online marketing. For a website, the content is the product. The reason that your visitors would want to come to your website, stay there and come back again tomorrow. The Google Panda Update gives high priority to good quality content. Authoritative sites such as The Times, CNN, and Wikipedia all have a high Page Rank since they provide the best quality content available online. Also, solid content leads to not just repeat visitors but abstracts of the same are taken are reworked on by other sites ensuring that the primary site gets Authority recognition. The content on the website should be original in form. A lot of websites are a habit of spinning the content on other sites to be uploaded on theirs. This results in duplication which is frowned upon by the Google Panda Update. According to Google, web searchers do not appreciate spun content as most of the times, the content is not just grammatically incorrect but in incoherent. The result is visitor dissatisfaction and Google will penalize the website using duplicate content by dropping the Page Rank of that website. Google Panda Update heavily penalized article submissions sites such as ezine articles and goarticles as duplicate and spun content was found on them. This led the editors to bring out extra checks on submissions. The Google Panda Update has therefore, reduced the use on article spinning software’s.
2. Backlinks:
A very grey area of understanding for any online marketer is the concept of Backlinks. In reality a backlink is nothing but a vote of confidence (per se) to your website from another website. For e.g. let’s say you are writing an article on Google Panda Update. The information for this article, apart from your experience is also the Google Blog. Therefore, for the reader’s reference you will have a link to the Google Blog which talks about the Google Panda Update thereby making it easier for the reader to read the article and get more information. For online gaming, let’s say that an online poker review site has written a review for a poker software website. They will have a link to the online poker cardroom for the reader’s reference. This process of back linking tells Google that you are in the habit of ensuring that your reader’s get all the desired information. Online marketers have found ways and means of using this back linking process by “buying links”. The practice is however, frowned upon and may get penalized by the latest Google Panda Update or its future versions. Efforts are being made to ensure that the outbound links (links which leave your website and go to another website) are authentic and not paid for. Another lesson learnt after the initial Google Panda Update was the breakdown of link farms. Link farms were in essence web pages which had only links as content. After the first Google Panda Update, these web pages saw their Page Rank not just fall, but in many cases it was in the negative.
3. Structure:
The structure of a website plays a crucial role for webmasters and online marketers, especially those having e-commerce websites. Apart from having quality content, it is essential that your structure, including your URLs and re-directs are firm. Any lack of effort is punished strongly by the Google Panda Update. The bigger your website (bigger relates to the number of pages), the more it gets crawled by Google. Also, your structure should ensure that links and banners placed on your website are not crowding your content for Google will penalize you for it as the recent Google Panda Update did to a majority of e-commerce sites with too many advertisements.
4. Header, Meta Tags, Description and Keywords:
The Google Panda Update has ensured that just like its earlier versions, significant importance is given to your header marks and keywords. These are an essential part of your content and webpage. Any webpage that does not have a header and description does not have adequate number of keyword (the target word of the article) will rank low on Google. The description comes in the Google search as a short write-up of what to expect and is highly essential for a web searcher. So also is true for the Header tag. Care should be taken while you choose your keywords. Google Panda Update has come hard and strong on websites that go too far in their keyword numbers at times penalizing them heavily. Google always states that the keyword number should be enough for you to be mentioned in the web searches (SERPS) but not too much to create a nuisance value to your readers. In essence the Google Panda Update expects you to work hard and try to find that perfect blend between the number of keywords required for the Google crawler to index you and rank you high and for the reader to have an easy read of your article. Google Panda Update has seen to have penalized virtually all websites that were in the habit of “keyword stuffing”.
5. Posting Cycle:
Google expects you to have a regular posting cycle for your articles. The Google Panda Update heavily penalized all websites that did not have any updated articles or website content. Google expects the online marketers and webmasters to take effort and diligently update their websites in order to serve the visitors in a better way and the Google Panda Update monitors the effort.

Google Panda Update has changed online marketing for good

The Google Panda Update has changed the way online marketers now look at promoting their websites and products. Gone are the days where you could spam a visitor with tons of pop-up ads. With introductions like “block”, a visitor has the power to blacklist your website which in turn will be registered with Google and be made viral through the social media Google +. In short, Google has laid down the rules of online marketing and with the Google Panda Update set to have more tweaks in the future; online marketers are trying every possible method to abide by their rules.

~ Online Marketing Team