Conservative Measures in SEO

In a Tweet on Twitter by Google, Google says that there won't be any more Panda updates for this year (2011). It will resume after the New Year. For sites that are still spooling from the changes—some has lost 50% of their income or more—this is only a small suspension. Nonetheless it does give sites some breathing room to fix what Panda is likely to target next.

Bye Bye Google Panda

One drastic but effective strategy SEO Theory indicates is a complete does over of the site.

More conservative measures include:

Ø  Avoiding shortcuts. "It was most likely the shortcuts that hurt you," SEO theory says. These included lazy Web mastering and quick populating of the site with boilerplate or aggregated content.

Ø  No "no-indexing" thin content. When you did this, SEO Theory says, "you left it there for the search engines to see that you were really just trying to please them."

Ø  Don't build a site to please advertisers. Populate a site with too many ads, and the reader is less likely to visit the site again, much less link to it. "Statistically speaking, only a fraction of the people who visit a Website will actively report their frustration with the site to a search engine," ST writes.

"But when a search engine receives enough of those reports it can track correlations between known frustrated users’ SERP behavior and the SERP behavior of the silent masses."

Ø  Watch for thin affiliates. Affiliate sites have been impacted by Google's Panda algorithm changes, perhaps even more so than direct or parent sites. A thin affiliate—defined by Search Engine Watch as an affiliate site that doesn't produce valuable online content–is particularly in Google's sites right now, SEWsays.

Ø  Fix broken links. This is one of three recommendations Search Engine Journal makes to prepare for Panda 2012. Read the other two here. It warns against broken links because link farms have been abusing this strategy for years. "While not intending on falsely satisfying the search algorithm, Google may think that is what is happening."