Google’s latest Panda update could banish your website from their search results. If you have found your website rankings and traffic slowing down, it might be that your site was hit by Google’s recent Panda 4.0 update. The update is designed to ‘clean up’ bogus and defunct websites from search results but, as usual, genuine sites can be caught in the cross fire. mmadigital’s Matt Rycroft has some tips to help you duck and cover.

The Panda algorithm was created by Google back in 2011. Designed to clear out low-quality websites, mostly those with scraped/copied content, from their search results. Google say that the initial Panda change significantly affected about 12 percent of searches, and that a regular user might notice a higher quality of results from their searches.To keep up with those who try and work-around these algorithm updates, Google refreshes Panda about once a month. This 4.0 update however is more than just a monthly update and so a greater degree of low quality websites will be ignored by future searches.

If you’ve been hit by the update, then simply put, Google doesn’t think your website content is good enough to be in their search results.It sounds harsh but if Google is going to continue holding on to its crown as the ‘verb’ for searching the internet. Then they need to ensure their product quality is as high as it can be.

Content is king

As we’ve written about before, content is king. If your web copy is of high standard then you should be ok. Have a quick read through the text on your pages. Are you really proud of what’s written? If you have a blog would you be happy if someone else had written that article for you. Is it really up to your standards? If the answer is “no” then have a look at rewriting and amending your content strategy. If you think it is, have someone impartial read over it anyway, just to see if they agree. 

Talking to someone independent is always a good idea, and there are plenty of experts in content and website creation who can give you impartial advice on what you’re doing and help guide you through the search engine jungle. Through them you can have content created that puts your law firm first, while still following Google’s requirements for ‘high quality’ content. You might be doing this already but you do get what you pay for.

Spam

If your current go-to-guy is cheap, so too will the quality of the content they provide. It’s this type of content that may well suffer at the hands of Panda. The money you save with sub-standard content is a tiny drop in comparison to the loss of business you may suffer if you don’t end up on Google’s first page. The sites Google is targeting, and the spam they generate, is a big problem online, it can make some unscrupulous people a lot of money. Removing their funding streams from Google’s search results helps shut down those behind these spam sites. Of course the battle is ever ongoing.

Matt Rycroft is head of online marketing at mmadigital