SEO Checklist to Panda Proof Your Website

Rate this post
Google Panda affected around 12% of search engine queries and claimed to return more quality results in the  search results. The first Panda update happened on Feb 24th, 2011 and since then 24 Panda updates were announced almost one on each month since Feb 2011. The latest Panda update which was update number 24, happened on Jan 22, 2013.

Which Sites Were Affected?

Google Panda Update (Image credit:- usainternetmarketing)

Panda affected sites which were mostly content farms. For this reason, this update was also known by the name of Farmer update due to its effectiveness of targeting the content farms. Some of the early losers were sites like Hubpages, Squidoo, Ezinearticles etc. Since then these websites have changed their strategy, included original and user friendly content and removed low quality pages in order to get back their lost search engine traffic.

Useful SEO Checklist For Having a Panda Friendly Website

Here are some vital points to Panda proof your website.

1- Panda detects the overall quality of the site and penalizes sites that does not maintains its quality. Have quality, original and fresh content on your site. Have an information rich site that answers the users query well.

2- Have correct HTML on your site, have a clear site hierarchy, have descriptive meta tags and proper sitemaps.

3- Check the speed of the site as this is an important factor while ranking a site. Sites that load faster go on to improve the user experience and are counted as a factor in improving the overall quality of the search results.

4- Avoid tricks that deceive the users like cloaking, doorway pages and keyword stuffing. If your site has a page that is lacking on content or has similar content then update that page and make it unique.

5- Do not start the content of the web page with advertisement as this degrades the user experience.

6- Work towards improving the bounce rate of your site and have a higher CTR. Both these elements work towards improving the overall user experiences.

7- Reduce the amount of boilerplate content and update your pages. (Boilerplate content is the same content that is present on each and every page of the site).

8- Amount of outbound links present on a page should be limited and must not be abused. Linking to bad neighbourhood sites affects the quality of the site.

9- Make sure to have proper grammar and spelling on your site.

10- Remove any broken links and check for any other site issues with the help of Webmasters Tools.

Recommended Reading:- 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Also See:- 

Seo After Panda and Penguin Update
Infographic on Google Panda Update

Google Panda Update 22
Google Panda Update 21

Google Panda Update Number 20
Google Panda 3.9.1
New Google Search Quality Updates
Importance of Content for Seo in a Post Panda World

How to Make Your Website More User Friendly
Step by Step Seo Copywriting Guide
Battle of Ranking Continues
Benefits of Seo
Page Speed Important for Improving Ranking