Hi Gang,
May I preface this newsletter / email with a few words to those
of our readers and members who are either based in Japan or have
Relatives / Loved ones affected by the events of the recent few
days.
May I just simply say this? You are in our thoughts and prayers
and from all of those here may I wish you respite and care from
the tragedy and if you are one of those unlucky enough to have
been affected by personal tragedy then may whatever deity it is
you worship, may they look after you in the days and months ahead.
Without wishing to sound facetious at this point, to the matter
in hand and that is, further analysis of the Panda Update.
No doubt like you all, I appear to have been inundated with material
and information about this and to clear up some confusion about
possible conflicts may I just say that there was only just one
update form Google and that the “Panda” and “Farmer Updates” are
on and the same.
The official term for the update as far as Google are concerned
(well Messrs Cutts and Singal anway) is “Panda” but as the main
thrust of the update was to redress the situation primarily
surrounding Content Farms and/or issues of excessive Dupe Content
the Update has become unofficially known as the Farmer Update.
As I said, this can be confusing and misleading and all of those
new products that have arisen from many a so called expert proclaiming
the upside and opportunities of the Farmer Update should technically
not be so confusing (makes you wonder what else they’re getting
slightly out of kilter but….) more misleading to the rest of
us.
Onwards with our take on it however (Free of charge ?). Now
today’s contribution comes by and large from some information
gleaned from Word tracker and our aim on the days and weeks
ahead is to try and bring to you information from as many sources
as possible to help you work your way through the update
Apparently, the aims of Panda are noble: to remove poor quality
sites from the top of Google’s results pages. Or as Matt Cutts,
Google’s head of spam, puts it in a blog post announcing Panda:
“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality
sites–sites which are low-value add for users, copy content
from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.
At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality
sites–sites with original content and information such as research,
in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”
The last thing Google wants is searchers being unhappy with
what they find. They might try another search engine if that
happens.
Few people other than the low-quality sites’ owners and their
investors will have a problem with that.
But all major Google updates leave ‘collateral damage’ behind
them: sites that just don’t match the target or deserve to be
penalised. Google are aware of this and so have asked those with
“a high quality site that has been negatively affected by this
change” to let them know about it here.
So if you have a high quality site that’s been adversely affected
by Panda Farmer then let Google know.
So what Factors are likely to trigger off a Panda Attack?
- A high % of duplicate content. This might apply to a page,
a site or both. If it’s a site measure then that might contribute
to each page’s evaluation.
- A low amount of original content on a page or site.
- A high % (or number) of pages with a low amount of original
content.
- A high amount of inappropriate (they don’t match the search
queries a page does well for) adverts, especially high on the page.
- Page content (and page title tag) not matching the search queries
a page does well for.
- Unnatural language on a page including heavy-handed on-page
SEO (‘over-optimization’ to use a common oxymoron). Eg, unnatural
overuse of a word on a page.
- High bounce rate on page or site.
- Low visit times on page or site.
- Low % of users returning to a site.
- Low click through % from Google’s results pages (for page
or site).
- High % of boilerplate content (the same on every page).
- Low or no quality inbound links to a page or site (by count or %).
- Low or no mentions or links to a page or site in social media
and from other sites.
If any of these factors is relevant to Panda, it is unlikely
that they will be so on their own.
Combinations of factors will be required to get ‘Panda points’
(and points do not mean prizes in this game). Panda points will
be added up. Cross a threshold (Panda’s redline) and you are
‘blocked’.
‘Blocked’ is Matt Cutts’ word, used in that Wired interview:
“Whenever we look at the most blocked sites, it did match our
intuition and experience”. This suggests that …
… if a site gets defined as low quality then a penalty is applied
(it is ‘blocked’).
Google have since said that “low quality content on part of a
site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole.”
But ‘Low quality’ sites are not always ‘blocked’ (Matt’s use
of ‘most’ tells us this). So there must be exceptions to this
site-wide penalty.
Anyway enough of this at present and as and when more research
and information becomes available we’ll pass it on through.
Lastly we had a few questions sent through to us about our latest
initiative..”Precision Related Marketing”.
Precision Related Marketing” (hereinafter PRM) relates primarily
to drilling down and researching from one main keyword or phrase
an associate network of terms via Google’s Wonder Wheel and then
taking that list and data mining as many Blog Urls we can find
that fall within this keyword list and that are also available
for commenting upon.
We further refine this list until we are primarily left with
Blog Urls where the Page Rank is PR2 or greater for the Blog
Url itself and not the domain. This as you can imagine therefore
gives you a list of immense power in two categories. Firstly
the Blog Url for commenting lies within the direct theme or is
semantically linked to your main theme so is ideal for Google’s
purposes and secondly the actual Url itself for commenting upon
has been recognised by Google through its Url Page Rank as being
fairly noteworthy.
We’ve been using this technique within our own Client SEO Division
for some time now and the clients love it and as far as “Panda”
is concerned this ticks all the boxes. The comments are on relative
thematically linked pages and also pages with previously assessed
power as far as Google is concerned.
We will be rolling this programme out to our members shortly
but in the short term are going through presentations to clients
several times a day. This means that we are generating huge
surplus data sets that we cannot use within the short term
future and have been letting these go “at cost” to those members
of SLS who have blogs or networks of sites that suit whatever
particular Data Set we have available.
To give you an idea of how it works and the costs the Urls are
sold on a pro rata basis. The more powerful the page i.e. the
greater the Page Rank then the more expensive the cost. The
rate card is at present as follows:
PR7 Pages $700 per thousand Urls
PR6 Pages $600 per thousand Urls and so on down to PR 2.
One member recently bought one list from us and whilst the theme
must remain anonymous the list comprised of 8,579 Blog Urls and
the cost breakdown was as follows AT RETAIL PRICE:
PR Unit Cost No Total
8 800 1 0.8
7 700 3 2.1
6 600 64 38.4
5 500 360 180
4 400 1804 721.6
3 300 3157 947.1
2 200 3190 638
8579 2528
The Retail total price that we charge our clients would have
been $2,528 for 8,579 Urls for links which at a unit price is
an average 29 cents per link Url which is a steal. As this was
data generated for demo purposes we sold this particular batch
for $500 which was effectively at cost.
As this is all data that is generated by our suppliers we cannot
give this away for free but even at cost is one heck of a steal
(as they say). There is a minimum fee of $100 and if necessary
the member could have just bought the PR5-8 links if they so decided
and the charge for this would have been $221 but they decided
to go for the lot and as such we were able to pass these on at
a massive discount.
Anyway before I go on too much about this we have a few data sets
left over in the following subject themes:
Finance
Health
Iphones
Smartphones
Real Estate
Television
Technology
Stress
Anxiety
So if there are members out there who would like Urls for Links
plus Keywords in any of the areas above then get in touch and
we’ll see what we can do. Also we have an expanding list of
presentations coming up in the next few weeks and if there are
any members out there who would like additional areas covered
not mentioned above then now is the time to let us know as the
subject area matters not at all to us, this data is purely for
demo purposes and we are more than happy to pass this info through
at cost if the SLS member so wishes.
Let me know if anyone is interested.
Speak soon
Steve
