1 Month After The Panda Update - How Is Your Traffic? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

My search engine traffic actually went up! I may be out of the loop, because I haven't heard of this panda update…

No changes for me. I just recently switched to Word Press from Blogger back in February and I saw an increase then but since the switch it has been averaging out to the same.

Search engine traffic on MoneyMamba was up solidly last month.  SE traffic went from 451 visitors in March to 1087 in April.  I should be on track for 30% SE growth this month.

Short articles aren't going to cut it anymore in the SERPs; that much is now evident.

I noticed a nice little boost in some high keyword posts. I was happy to see the spammers fall and the quality sites rise.

My SE traffic is up from about 5% to 15% this month.  However, some of that is likely attributed to adding more articles into the pool, too. 

thx guys!

It seems that "older" sites were more affected than new blogs!

@Miss T,

the key is to spend time ;-) if you don't have much time to put on your blog, it will be hard to make it grow.

Yeah, it definitely takes a lot of work at first!

Here is an update on Panda from Google from last week on their Webmaster Blog. Here is an interesting tidbit on what is coming …

Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year

http://googlewebmastercentral……ality.html

Search is up about 10-15% for me over last 30 days. I've noticed a significant spike in some keywords.

Post edited 10:02 am – May 17, 2011 by JT_McGee

Google is dealing with half-truths when they say Panda is only one of 500 changes this year.  That statement is true, I'm sure, but Google makes several hundred changes per year to their algorithms that aren't nearly to the same scale as Panda.  We won't see anything as "game changing" as Panda for a very long time, I sense.

BTW, I don't think it was only newer sites that saw growth.  An older site of mine, which has nearly six years of domain history and a lot of "historic" content saw quite the boost from Panda to the tune of 30-40%, depending on the day.  Truthfully, I think the drop in ranking for older sites is due a bit to game theory; webdevs who had been around for a while had learned to beat Google all too well, and were far too heavy on SEO and light on content.  The new update is light on SEO, and heavy on content.

Google is raising the bar for content; they want quality, informative, and authoritative content that is not general in nature, but serves to provide a solution to a problem, a well-thought analysis of a topic, and is well-written.  All the while, I suspect that the value of links (especially internal links, from what I've seen) is being lowered.  In looking through Google's recent comments, it appears to me that they are targeting people who had previously earned #1-3 spots because they SEO'd as best they could–h2 tags galore, internal linking that isn't for humans but for search engines, and/or page titles that match directly to popular search phrases.

Webmasters who do the complete opposite of what eHow does will be the winners in the search engines.  Let's use an example: an article on "How to plan a child's birthday party inexpensively." The article is here: http://www.ehow.com/how_14770_…..party.html

I admit that this is probably better than 80% of eHow's content, but look through those steps and tell me what that article says that isn't plainly obvious.  I know nothing about planning birthday parties, and absolutely nothing about children, and I could write that same article in 10 minutes because it really doesn't say all that much.

However, I could spend a further 50 minutes, for a total of one hour writing it, to research and thicken it so it is actually useful.  Step 2, for example, is to find an inexpensive location.  Why not thicken it with a list of national organizations that do rent out space for parties?  Step 6 could use some more content, too.  What if you gave an example, even an off the wall one, where you find the cost for a package of 6 twinkies and the cost for a package of 36 twinkies, and compute the difference per twinkie?  Bam!  Completely original content that is also informative.  For Step 9, I know that most dollar and discount stores carry roughly the same stuff.  So, with a simple 10 minute perusal of DollarTree's website, I can give examples of party favors and materials that can be purchased inexpensively.  

If all an article does is describe a basic thought process to solve a problem, it isn't adding value, and it shouldn't do well in the search engines.  If, however, an article not only explains the thought process but gives resources, thoughtful analysis, and action steps, then it solves the problem and will naturally rise in the search engines due to Google's quality control, or natural backlink growth that results from people passing the link to friends via FB and Twitter, posting it on forums like this one, or linking to it from their website.

/endSEOnerding (My love of SEO borders on unhealthy.)