3 Steps Towards Using Panda To Your Advantage

Panda is a Google algorithm that is designed to filter out pages with weak content from any given SERP. The most recent Panda update occurred in September 2014, and hit thin content pages hard. Even huge e-commerce sites like E-bay suffered due to their minimal product descriptions. E-bay is a huge site right? You would think they know better! The thing is, people who post on E-bay are rarely webmaster or professional SEO Salt Lake City companies. Even if you are not at the professional level, there is no reason why you shouldn’t use the Panda algorithm to your advantage. To do this, follow the 3 simple steps below.

Generate Awesome Content

By awesome, we mean new, original, and perhaps…jazzy page content that provides a great read for any user. Even if you are talking about plumbing fixtures, there is absolutely no good reason not to make your content engaging, friendly and attractive. This means good use of headline tags, white space, links, text formats  and lists. So far, the rule of thumb for good content has been 1,500 words. Go ahead and push it up. Write as much as you can. The more valuable information you provide, the better. Do not, I repeat do  not copy and paste content or use spun content. Algorithms are getting smarted with every update, so do it right the first time!

Structure Your Website Nicely

Since advertising has begun back with the invention of the printing press, marketers have referred to the “above the fold” concept. This essentially means you want to place your worthwhile and most important content higher up on the page. What this means for SEO is a direct conflict with fancy website design. These days, people are really excited about huge, image focused home pages, with sliders that push your actual website content way down the page. While this may grab the attention of your human user, a web crawler will not be very excited about ranking your page highly. Of course, we are trying to focus on the user more than robots, so there is a way to please both! Infuse your huge header images with alt text, headlines, and make them clickable! Also, keep your menu high up on the page.

Use Video

If you aren’t a video making genius, that’s ok! Just record yourself reading whatever is on your page if you don’t have any other good ideas. Hey, we aren’t all creative artists right? Optimizing your video is a great way to create an interactive web page, keep users on your page longer, and it keeps you current with trending website tactics. Additionally, if you keep your videos cached on YouTube or Vimeo or some other such site, you are automatically utilizing a social networking aspect of SEO.