SEO / SEM Blog by Search Circus

The Latest Update from Google Will Surely Affect More than a Handful of Businesses, Link Directories and Hopefully Spammers Too!

After hearing about Google’s Panda  aka Farmer update (who comes up with these nicknames, anyway?) from 2 separate sources off the web, we decided to investigate how it will impact a company’s SEO marketing firm’s strategy. Everyone has their opinion on this, so we thought you’d like the in-a-nutshell breakdown of the Farmer update….get your pitchforks ready…you’re gonna need to clean up the muck in your SEO plan for 2011.

According to the official Google blog, “Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible…a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries.”

Google’s official statements on the Feb 24, 2011 algorithm update…

• The purpose of Panda was to improve and remove low quality sites and information from your daily search results including those sites that have duplicate content or don’t provide useful information. – I hope this removes those 1 page affiliate ads that want you to spend $97 on the newest [insert product/service here].
• Google says they “have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem.” Wow, I didn’t know they were ecologists, but the goal is to reward useful quality websites and put those  other low quality sites as far down the search results as possible or to completely removed them altogether.
• This latest update has been in the works for a year, Google states, mostly with strategizing a way to reduce the number of sites that are just not useful to us consumers.

What this update means for your SEO marketing strategy…

• If you have multiple websites with basically the same information, you may be penalized for content that has been “scraped” or spun. Instead you’ll want to review and/or rewrite content to provide the very best value to your visitors. In other words, make it different and provide trust in your brand.
• Ask people outside your company if they would buy from your website or trust the information contained on it, that will be a good indicator if you providing high quality content or not.
• Several article directories such as Buzzle.com, Articlesbase.com and others saw a significant decrease in traffic; however, many of these articles simply weren’t quality proof or authoritative to make the ranks of the new algorithm. EzineArticles.com also included in the traffic hit will likely up their ante with stricter submission guidelines and higher minimum word counts, so they can get back on the wagon.
• Check your analytics before Feb. 24, 2011 and after this date for traffic to see if your site was affected, and if you currently don’t have any analytics program, we strongly advise that you implement one today. The most popular free analytics program is of course, Google Analytics, but others are available that will provide with non-biased traffic reports too.
• If you have a blog marketing or article marketing program, ensure you are not submitting the exact content to several places. The Farmer update is weeding out these submissions, so have someone rewrite or reformat with a new title and content, so that it still provides value and authority without producing duplicate content.
• Several shopping directories and Google Places competitors like Manta and InsiderPages.com were also hit as providing low quality value to the search engines. To reiterate, it’s important to complete your company’s profile and provide a unique description on these sites so that it sets you apart from other businesses. And do list yourself on all the Google sites including Google Places aka Google Maps as well as their own shopping directory.

Which websites were most affected by the Farmer Update?

Check out this list on SEOmoz.org, this is nice breakdown of sites and the amount of traffic that was lost. Additionally, most of these sites have issued notices about updates to combat the loss of traffic. Examiner.com and Hubpages.com have already issued notices of changes as a result of this update to all members.