Google Panda v.2
Hey all,
So the word on the SEO street is Google are set to launch Panda the Second! I’m sure this will send a a sigh of relief throughout the disgruntled many who saw their traffic plummet post the release of the bear!
Well here are few thoughts from Kickstart…I am sure they are not original however we thought we’d share them anyways.
So What’s Up With The New Panda?
I have witnessed first hand, post Panda 1, content that has been scraped and whacked on any Tom, Dick or Harry’s blog begin to rank above the original source which is seriously uncool. Google are claiming that Panda 2 will be focusing on this in a major way to try and stop this from happening for obvious reasons!
This is the main attribute of Panda 2 as you can imagine how frustrating it is to spend days, weeks and months dedicated to creating unique content masterpieces for your website and some tinker comes along and steals it from under you and not only gets your hard work…they get Google glory for it too!!
How Do You Recover From Being Struck By The Beast?
Well..this is a tricky one as Kickstart have not come face-to-face with any survivors as of yet but here are a couple of hints and tips that we reckon are a good place to start:
CANONICAL
If you have a lot of duplicate on your website whack in a canonical tag. This basically says to Google, “yer, I have duplicate content on my website and it’s there for a reason so leave me alone please!” This is particularly handy for websites that sell products in a range…for instance if your website sells T-Shirts and all your t-shirts are made from the same cotton, are the same size, have the same logo but are just in different colours you don’t want to spend time and energy going through writing unique descriptions for a million different coloured t-shirts…hence, input a canonical and you are done!
WEBSITE CLEANSING
Well….this can either be a quick job or a painstakingly long one depending on how large your site is. However, once you’ve done it you’ll feel good! Basically, we all know that once we’ve been running our websites for a while and they increase in size then it’s easy to get complacent. Take a wet, sunday afternoon and sit down with your headphones in and laptop on and get going through your website and checking whats needed, what’s not and what is duplicate and GET RID! Have a good old tidy up basically!
WHAT IF I’VE BEEN SCRAPED?
There’s a tonne of duplicate content checkers out there! A classic is Copyscape. However if there’s a particular site you think has snapped up your precious content then try this one as it lets you compare 2 separate URLs directly…very handy!
Anyway, Kickstarts tired and has waffled onto you for long enough.
Keep tuning in Kickstarters!
