SEO Codes

Over time, Google realized that there are many tricks and tweaks that webmasters or site owners are practicing in order to rank their websites on search engine results pages. Thus, Google change their ranking methodology and in came Google Panda. It is the latest update which brings an entirely new way for Google to evaluate websites in its search results. Although they still consider many criteria that they have in the past, this new element of their ranking methodology can greatly affect SEO.

It is clear that Google Panda wants better quality websites in its results. This also means that signals from other websites were given less importance and the thing that really matters here is what the actual users think about the website. With this new update, Google is now equipped with automated users’ power in determining its search results. It is user-powered without the user having to do anything different about it. In so doing, Panda prevents lower quality sites from tricking Google into thinking that they are of higher quality.

On the other hand, Panda factors various user signals in order to help Google determine the quality of a website. For example, it examines "Time on Site" as a way to determine how quality of an experience the user is having on a given site. It also considers the bounce rate, which is a measure of the percentage of people that leave a site without doing anything. Social signals such as shares and +1's were given importance too in order to see if people are recommending a certain webpage. To see how people are navigating through a particular site, page views per visit were also given attention. Moreover, Google Panda rewards Branded Search Traffic or the amount of people that are specifically looking for a given site. For example, if your music site is called "Blues Around the Corner" and there is an increasing amount of people searching for "Blues Around the Corner" to get to your website, Google will then recognize that your site is being enjoyed by many users.

All in all, the Panda update utilizes usage metrics which signal Google how users value a certain webpage or website. This is also their way to determine if the content that the reader lands on is truly high in quality. If before, you are more concerned with unique content in order to rank well in Google, with this update, you should change your perspective for a unique content that is also of high quality.