I’m sure by now you have heard about Google’s update and how many have suffered the wrath of the Panda. The aim of their Panda and Penguin updates have been to remove poor quality sites from the top of Google’s search page.
Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam, stated 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.”
In order to have a strategic marketing plan for your website and avoid being stalked by the Panda, check out these 5 marketing strategies to help you develop a great website:
1. Evaluate the content on your site and make changes to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Make a list of your different types of pages including quality articles, low quality articles, products, blog post, etc. Put the list in a column and start creating a table within a spreadsheet. Add columns for relevant factors like ads, little content and percentage drop in Google US organic visits. Fill in the values for each type of page and look at how much of your site it taken up by your lowest quality pages.
2. Don’t copy from another site’s content but replace it with quality original content. You can test this by removing some of the pages and adding 301’s from them to relevant pages up your site’s hierarchy.
3. Offer users more when they first enter a page. Use images, videos, attractive text and pages linking to your best, related editorial content.
4. Promote your content on social media including Twitter and Facebook-create a media presence with quality content. Promotion is sharing what your content has to offer and making sure that it gets distributed to the people that want to see it. By using the various social media channels, you can circulate content and put your brand in front of potential clients or new audiences.
5. Build your brand awareness of your company. Building a connected brand requires creative and strategic thinking. Start with blogging and add free content like ebooks, templates or infographics. Your brand tells the story of who you are and your personality should shine through.
Make as many of these changes as quickly as you can. With your content improving, you should be able to improve your strategic marketing plan to overcome the Panda.
