What You Need to Know About the Google Panda Update

On February 24th of this year Google announced a significant update to how it ranks websites and blogs. It made the front page of the Wall Street Journal and started a flurry or email hitting my inbox. It also started a barrage of junk-email trying to sell “save your position at Google” services – which you should ignore!

Frankly, most people have nothing to worry about.

What Google is doing is getting rid of lousy, irrelevant, top-ranked websites.

I think it’s great. I think it’s about time.

Websites that are not 100% relevant to a search, websites that are top ranked because of keyword stuffing, websites that use black-hat techniques or try to cheat, and websites that were made only to promote paid or sponsored links (i.e. Google Adwords) are all on their way to the bottom of the pile.

So if none of these things apply to your website you probably have nothing to worry about.

Here are a few things you should know:

1) Google likes websites and pages that are the MOST relevant to the search performed by a Google user. In other words, if your pages create the most desirable and informative page that matches a search – you’re in the game!

2) Google doesn’t just look at one page to determine relevancy – it looks at your entire website.

3) Google Webmaster Tools help you determine what keywords Google thinks your website is relevant for.

4) Google absolutely hates when you try to manipulate the index or “cheat.”

5) You CAN NOT just “stuff” keywords on a page and expect that to work. Weave your keywords and keyword phrases into your page copy. I know this isn’t easy in all cases, but it (a) has to be done, and (b) works very effectively.

6) Page-title tags are still critically important to the entire top-ranking process, but they are not the only factor. If your page-title tags do not have the keywords in them that match the search performed there is NO WAY that page will rank high.

7) Inbound links from other thematically similar websites and blogs have a tremendous amount of value when it comes to (a) getting top ranked at Google, and (b) staying top ranked. Remember though, it’s not about the quantity of links but the quality of the sites linking to you.