Google Panda and Panda Penalty

Google Algorithm has over 200 factors to evaluate a content’s quality. After evaluating, google gives that article a place in SERPs. Google Panda is one of these factors. Actually, Panda Penalty is the fact. Here we are going to talk about Google Panda and Panda Penalty in detail.
Let’s begin.

See Alo

• How Google Search Works?
• 150 SEO Factors: Get a Higher Google Ranking
• A to Z about Subdomain 

When was Google Panda released?

Google Panda’s release date is 23rd February 2011. But then, it was not a fact of 200+ SEO factors. Initially, it was an algorithm update.

What is Google Panda?

Initially, it was an algorithm update in order to select high-quality sites and low-quality sites, and giving them their deserved place in SERP. Initially, it was called “Farmer” as well. You already know that it was a filter first, but now it is a core part of Google’s core algorithm. It was included as a part of the algorithm in January 2016. Now it is a ranking algorithm.

How does Google Panda work?

Here is a note, it doesn’t work in real-time. When a user searches for something, it does nothing. It works in the time of indexing. When content is being requested to be indexed, Google Panda evaluates the quality of that article.

What is Panda Penalty?

Google Panda focuses on some facts like plagiarism, poor user experience, etc. If it finds errors in those factors, it may penalize that site. Sometimes it penalizes those sites to be indexed too. It causes less to no traffic to your site. Visit "Pandalized.com" to see some graphical depictions of some sites hit by the Panda. 

What are the reasons of being penalized by Google Panda?

The major reasons are:

• Duplicate Content
• Thin Content
• Plagiarism
• Keyword Stuffing
• Lack of Trustworthiness
• Mismatching Search Queries
• Too many ads
• Poor User Experience
• User-Generated Spam

01. Duplicate Content:

It can be of two types. One is copying pasting from other sites and another is of own site. 

a) From Other Sites:

If you just duplicate any content from other sites and publish that on yours, then you will be penalized by Google Panda. If you publish that content after slightly modifying, it will bring it to good for you and your site. Google Panda is not less smart than you and me.

b) Duplicate Content from Own Site:

Suppose you have a site that supplies Football, Football Jersey, Football shoes, and so on. You created separate pages for each product. But all the text on every page is almost the same. You have just changed one or two sentences according to your product and remain everything else the same. Maybe you included on those pages your business motives, trustworthiness, address, media of paying prize, how to order. This information is always the same. You changed only one line “We supply high-quality balls” for one page and on other you just said, “We supply high-quality Jersey”. This would make no good. All the pages will be marked as spam by Google Panda.

02.Thin Content:

Thin contents refer to high-quality or low-quality short articles. A content that may be very much impressive but very short in size such as consisting of 50 words is called thin content. It is harmful to a site. Google Panda loves to penalize thin content publishing sites. It can put a negative impact on a site with poor user experience and bounce rate too. If your content is too short to read, it will take a user only about 15-20 seconds to complete. After completing he/she obviously will leave that page. Thereby, the bounce rate will be high which is not good. The quality of short content doesn’t matter a lot. So, in order to avoid the panda penalty, one should never publish thin content.

Google says, "Thin content with little to  no added value." 

 To learn more about Thin Content and effects of it directly from Google, click here. 

03. Plagiarism:

Plagiarism means using another author’s, expert’s thoughts, ideas, expression as own original. Without permission, without giving courtesy, without mentioning the source may include it. It is almost the same as duplicate content. Sometimes it can happen that you write the content of your own, but still, it may match with other contents of the web. So you should check your content’s plagiarized part before publishing. You can check it using so many free tools. “plagiarism detector” is one of those free tools. You can try it or can try others finding from search engines. Plagiarized content is one of the main facts of Panda Penalty.

04. Keyword Stuffing:

Surely, you try to rank your content(s) for one or more keyword(s). You always focus on it. Content writers try to use keywords several times in the content. This is a must. By using keywords many times in an article, the writer helps Google Algorithm to find out on what topic the article has written down. But remember, “Excess anything is bad.”

You need to keep in mind the term “Keyword Stuffing” or “Keyword Density”. You should not cross a density of 2.5%. It may bring a negative impact on your site. 1% is good. But you can go for 1.5%. But shouldn’t cross that. Look at our this' article's keyword density report. The additional image below shows the keyword density of that post.

Keyword Density Report of this Article

Before publishing any article, you should check your article’s keyword density report and edit your article according to that. You may use synonyms of your keyword sometimes. In order to check the keyword density “Copywritely Online Keyword Density Checker for SEO Pros” can help you. There are some more tools on this. “Keyword Stuffing is a BIG NO”- Mind It.

05. Lack of Trustworthiness:

Trustworthiness or authority has to be verified. To avoid Panda Penalty, one should give time to become verified as authorities on one’s topic and entities tot that a user or visitor might feel ease giving their information. Here another important fact to say, though not a part of this directly, is a lot of guests’ writings may put a bad impact on a site.

06. Mismatching Search Queries:

If your article fails to give information on user’s queries about the title of your article, then it will put a poor impact on your SERP rank. For instance, suppose you have published an article titled “Get Your Certificate on SEO Related Courses from the University of Davis via Coursera”. But in the body of your content there is no information about “How to get the certificate?” or maybe there’s no relevant information about the Coursera SEO course but too many ads. It will give you,

• Poor user experience
• High Bounce Rate
• User’s disappointment
• Thin content
• Marked as spam
• Lack of trustworthiness
• And thus, Panda Penalty

07. Too Many Ads:

If some of your site’s page contains too many paid ads with thin content, then you are going to be penalized for sure. Google Panda doesn’t like it neither users. Therefore, try to add ads in a very low number. In useful content for users, you can add 2 or 3 ads according to its length.

08. Poor User Experience:

It is one of the most important facts for a site. Any site that gives users a poor experience, cannot rank in SERPs. If poor user experience continues, the site may be penalized by Google Panda. Poor user experience can happen for too many reasons. Above mentioned 7 facts are 7 the reason that may result in poor user experience. Here we are mentioning again.

The reasons for Poor User Experiences:

• High Ads-Content Ratio
• Thin Content
• Content Farming
• Duplicate Article
• Lack of Trustworthiness or Authority
• Low-Quality Articles
• Mismatching User’s Queries
• Bad Architecture of Site

09. User-Generated Spam:

If the site’s owner does somethings like plagiarism, duplicating contents, adding too many ads, high-density keyword repeatedly, then Google will mark that as user-generated spam. User-generated spam is one of the main reasons to be penalized by Google Panda. 

Thus, those are some main reasons for being penalized by Google Panda. Keep those in mind to avoid Panda Penalty.

What Can I Do If I Already Penalized by Google Panda?

It is difficult, and it is really tough to recover from Panda Penalty. SEO experts suggest some tips be followed, but it will not surely recover your panda penalty but can help to do that in a slow process. Here we are mentioning those:

• Improving the quality of published articles
• Decreasing ads on pages
• Removing thin contents
• Removing duplicate articles
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Using nofollow command
• Gaining trustworthiness as much as possible

These are some tasks that you can do if you have been penalized by Google Panda. But remember, recovering from Panda Penalty is so much hard. So, you shouldn’t do anything that may cause your site to be penalized.

This was a part of SEO. You know that SEO is an important strategy of Digital Marketing. Learn about Top 10 Digital Marketing Strategies.