The Panda Update

Who Am I? Co-author of The Art of SEO President of Stone Temple Consulting 20+ person SEO and PPC firm Trainer for Instant E-Training Founder of Web Site Publishing Companies Publish web sites, grow them, then sell them 2 significant exits so far On

What was it all about? Panda targeted at content farms? Broader than that Real Question: How good is your content? – User engagement (compared to competition) – Sameness/me-too-ishness – Content Quality

1. User Engagement

Bounce Rate Google Analytics – Did the user view only one page? Google Toolbar – One page? How long on page? Search Results Interaction – Time between click through to back to results

Time on Site Hard to measure with Analytics – Measures time from 1 st page view to start of last page view Easier to measure with Google Toolbar – Can see when they go to another site

Pages Per Visit Easy to measure in analytics Easy to measure with the Google Toolbar

Search Results Interaction

Chrome Blocklist Extension

Site Previews

Social Metrics

Social News Sites

2. Is this you?

Sameness Do we really Need 2.54 Million Results?

3. Thin content

Must Find Ways to Add Value Manufacturer Supplied Text?

4. Myths

No way to get whitelisted made-no-significant-changes-to-the-farmer- update-66591

There is no blacklist

5. This is a Fundamental Shift

How Ranking Used to Work 24% Trust/Authority of Domain 22% Link Popularity of Page 20% InBound Anchor Text 15% Keyword Usage 7% Traffic / Click-Through Data 6% Social Graph Metrics 5% Registration / Hosting Data Source SEOmoz Ranking Factors Survey

What it Might Look Like Now 21% 19% 11% 18% 7% 20% 4% 21% Trust/Authority of Domain 19% Link Popularity of Page 18% InBound Anchor Text 11% Keyword Usage 7% Traffic / Click-Through Data 20% Engagement Metrics 4% Registration / Hosting Data Source: ME

What to do?

Kill Weak Pages - FAST

Or Repair Them

How To Repair? User Generated Content – Not enough traffic? Try Facebook Contests to get it Replace thin content with deep content (or at least original content) Offer unique tools

Address Engagement Measure It Improve it

How To Improve? Enticing cross links Great tools / content Videos Contests, prizes, surveys, … Figure out how to get users to spend more time with your site! If all else fails: Disable the back button of their browser

Be Surgical

Know the Goal

Thank You! Eric (508) For a One Sheet SEO Checklist, me, or drop off a business card