Sunday, June 8, 2014

What Does the Panda 4.0 update mean for SEO?



SEO's spent a restless last week of the month of May, 2014. Even as Google was preparing to launch Panda 4.0, a few of the prominent sites had already begun witnessing huge decline in visibility and traffic. Although this may have been due to the release of spam algorithm version 2.0, the launch of Panda 4.0 continued the loss of visibility for prominent sites.

As Google’s Matt Cuts had previously mentioned about the upcoming changes, this update maybe specific to certain keywords. Google had received complaints regarding a few keywords that particularly attracted spam. Thus, this update was in the pipeline for some time now. Though the exact manner in which the updates resulted in the lowering of visibility is still unclear, Google had declared that about 7.5% of English queries will be impacted by this update. Going by the percentage, Panda 4.0 will have the highest impact among all the Panda updates. Thus, it is time, once again, for SEO Agencies and SEO Professionals to put themselves on hot seats.

Let us start with what we know. It is seen that the Press Release sites have taken the first hits in the largest volumes. Not many are complaining about this as such sites have become infamous for becoming hubs for spam links. What it means, for the SEO's, is they have to now take extra care while posting content to the Press Release sites. It can no longer be “post it anywhere you can”. SEO Professionals will now have to put Press Release sites through careful scrutiny before hitting the post button.

The SEO Agencies should also be ready for more changes as and when more effects emerge. What they should also remember, is that a quality website with quality content is the only characteristic that will remain untouched by these changes. For all the other factors, the game of cat and mouse will continue.

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