The New Google Panda Is Here

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September 25, 2014 Google has officially announced Panda 4.1 27th update algorithm that specially designed to filter low quality or thin content from ranking high in the search engines. It started most likely last Tuesday or Wednesday and it will continue this week and beyond week until it is completed. In the Panda 4.1 update those small and medium sized high-quality websites will rank better in the search engines.

This is not just another refresh considering Google has added and updated more signals to its algorithm. Google’s Pierre Far mentioned that Google added a “few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely.” Apparently it will impact about 3-5% of search queries which is a pretty significant update.

People are reporting in various forums such as blackhatworld, digitalpoint, and Google+ that pages that have a keyword density of 1% or lower are dropping in the SERPs by 10, 20 and even 30 positions. Others are mentioning that it’s not about keywords density but rather about low quality content.

Pierre also mentioned the update rewards high quality small to medium sized sites with better rankings. That’s great news if you are working hard on high level quality content, but bad news if you are working on local pages that are as thin as a pancake.

Here are a few steps you can take to avoid thin content:

Review your content: Ask others to evaluate your content since you are more than likely tied too closely to it.

Reword to create original content: Don’t simply replicate somebody else’s content. Instead gather information about a certain topic and then craft original, compelling content that will ultimately engage users.

Use related terms, not just core keywords: Besides implementing keywords into your content, include related terms of the topic to cast a wider net and potentially rank for additional keywords.

Have you noticed any site’s that have been affected by the Panda update? If so let us know in the comments section below.