Panda Sneezed – Did Your Website Catch a Cold?

By James Martell on 14 November 2011 @ 11:52 AM.

Tags: panda, google panda, duplicate anchor text.

Somewhere between October 14th and October 20th, Google made an adjustment to its algorithm that impacted thousands of websites. Some sites got nailed pretty severely seeing their traffic fall to half of normal. Others saw a reduction in traffic but not nearly as severe and still others were not impacted at all.

The chat forums were alive with activity and the usual kneejerk reactions were filling up the threads. “Google has ruined my business” was a common refrain along with complaints that the changes came without warning. It’s easy to bash Google but you have to remember that Google doesn’t exist to make your business easy. Google continues to strive to be the ultimate search engine delivering the most relevant return to a search.

So they tweaked the Panda to get better returns.

Take a deep breath and relax

Yes if you saw your traffic drop by half you’re entitled to be freaked out because that will definitely have an affect on sales. But from the data that I see, websites that were hit hard were the exception not the rule. For most affected sites it was a matter of losing established positions on page one or maybe even getting bumped to page two.

My advice is to not panic, take a deep breath, and then analyze what happened.

In the ten plus years that I have been in this business Google has adjusted the algorithm a dozen times and if I were to compare this latest change to the other dozen, I would rank it a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being disastrous.

It’s too soon to tell exactly, but it looks like this change is not irreversible. I think there are a number of things you can do to get your ranking back without having to start all over.

Just what triggered the drop in traffic?

First of all, let’s take a look at just how severe this change really is. From data collected from my clients who use us for backlinking and from data of my students it appears that we are talking about an adjustment of page 1 rankings. In other words if you ranked number 2 on page one you might be ranking number 8 or 9 or maybe even slipped to page 2.

While that’s definitely going to affect traffic, how big a deal is it when you consider you’re competing against millions of web pages and you’re still at the top of the list. This wasn’t a disaster, it was an adjustment. If you’ve lost a few places for a keyword phrase like say Genesis WordPress theme, don’t panic. I think there’s a way you can correct the situation.

But what caused it?

It’s been a while since I’ve pulled an all nighter but I did when I realised what happened. As I mentioned above, I have real data to work with thanks to my clients and my students so I had an opportunity to do an analysis based on real results rather than just guessing like many in the chat forums were doing.

I’m not suggesting that I have the entire answer but one thing leaped out at me like a charging rhino.

Google does not like *duplicate* anchor text pointing to the same page.

That is the one thing that became crystal clear in a review of the data available to me. Only a few of the clients that I have who use us for building backlinks were affected but the one thing that they had in common was a repeated use of the same anchor text pointing back to a page.

And actually that makes perfect sense if you think it through.

If you’re into guest blogging, and I highly recommend that you do that to build healthy links to a page, then make certain that you are mixing up the anchor text that you include in your articles.

Think about it for a moment. If you have 30 articles posted and they are all using say “best outdoor rocker” as the anchor text, how natural does that appear to Google? What are the odds that 30 different webmasters would link back to your page using the exact same anchor text?

Google is constantly analyzing the pages that are sending you links. Google counts those links as votes for your page but remember, Google has access to ALL the data and can spot anomalies that don’t ring true. One of Google’s greatest challenges is filtering out spam and I suspect that was the motivation behind this adjustment in the algorithm.

The Fix

So if you’re using the exact same phrase (i.e. top premium WordPress business themes) as a backlink in all of your articles, mix it up some in the future. Add a word, delete a word, make it a plural or use a related keyword that you found on Google’s keyword tool.

That’s my thoughts on the change at the moment. As we gather a little more experience with it I’ll post an update. In the meantime, if you have questions or ideas about the change, please share them with the rest of us in the comment box below.

About the Author

You will receive actionable tips and *solid* money making advice directly from James Martell when you subscribe to his “Affiliate Buzz” affiliate marketing podcast (since 2003). James has been a full-time affiliate marketer since 1999 and has been *successfully* teaching others to do the same since 2001. A sought-after speaker, James has presented at Affiliate Summit, Commission Junction University, Digital River Lab, Pubcon, The System Seminar, and many others.

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