How to Survive the Next Google Panda / Penguin Update?

The Google Panda and Google Penguin spelled doom for many websites as it scrapped all the spammy, low-quality websites from the top ranks in the search engine. The update left many website designers and owners stranded as their hard work on SEO all went to waste overnight. The next version of Panda Update is on its way, so here are some dos and don’ts you can follow to survive yet another washout.

What should you do

Diversify Traffic: If all your traffic is directed from Google search, then your website will definitely take a hit when Panda updates comes. Since Google is the biggest search engines, it’s easier to rely on it heavily but ideally around 40% of your traffic should be referred by Google. Doing offline promotion and advertising helps.

Build a Community: You can open a page or a group in different social networking sites, start a Twitter feed to keep your users updated. Join relevant forums and keep posting, adding your website’s URL as your signature to get more traffic.

Fix Usability Problem: Make sure your website has an easy and accessible interface. Too complicated websites often fail to attract users or keep them interested. A good site map helps- both users and the spider to index.

What you should avoid

Don’t Buy Cheap SEO Services: This may result in more negative than positive. Cheap services will generate an overload of backlinks on Wikipedia, .edu sites which aren’t very significant. Poor link building services, once rendered, cannot be undone easily. Also, cheap services can leave you with duplicate content. If your website contains anything copied from somewhere else, it will be scrapped by the Panda algorithm.

Don’t Use Affiliate Marketing Without Good Content: Affiliate marketing is the type of marketing where a business awards another for the amount of traffic brought to the former by the latter. Unless you have really good, information rich content, do not opt for affiliate marketing.

Don’t Use Doorway Pages: Doorway pages or bridge pages are created to spam the index of a search engine so that it send the user to a different website than his original search intended. Yes, sure, this can bring stranded users to your webpage, but it is also foolish to consider they would stay on such a page. Also this violates the Webmaster Guidelines. We don’t know the specifications of the upcoming Panda update, but it could very well uproot websites if they have Doorway pages attached to them.

There are a lot of precautions the online community of website designers are taking to survive the upcoming Panda update. These are a few simple tricks you can employ, but you can go much deeper and make your website.