If you’ve noticed a big drop in traffic to your web-based business during 2011, then you may have been hit by the big, bad Panda. The Panda update is Google’s latest series of algorithmic changes. In early 2011, Panda affected what it considered to be “low quality, web-based content farms”. The result was lost traffic, millions in lost revenue, and lost jobs for many SEO consultants.
Briefly, the main triggers of the Panda Update included duplicated content, excessive use of manufacturer or non-unique content, RSS feed issues, incorrect canonical tag implementation, excessive on-site ads, poor on-page optimization, and other issues.
Back in February, when Google rolled out the initial Panda update, they provided very little concrete, actionable advice that Webmasters and business owners could use to directly reverse the drops in traffic and rankings they were experiencing. Finally, in May 2011, three months later, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal, published a detailed post on it’s Webmaster Central Blog. In it, Singhal described what constitutes a quality site and then lists twenty-two content-related issues Webmasters should be aware of when reviewing their site content going forward. I won’t list all those questions here, but the full list above should be reviewed by ALL site owners (and not just those already affected by Panda).
It’s critical to understand “Google’s mindset” about what they may be looking at specifically when reviewing a page in a post-Panda world. It’s called User Generated Content.
What is User Generated Content?
User generated content (UGC) is content that your audience adds to your site or which you add as a result of discussions with your audience.
UGC is all about connecting with a niche community, engaging that community to add content to your site, while promoting and sharing that content with others in and outside that niche. This idea of community content creation is nothing new.
The biggest take away here is that publishing new content isn’t enough anymore. You’ve got to create it for relevance and to provide something of value: create it for humans (not spiders). That’s the only way to truly engage your audience and incentivize your community to share, comment and engage over and over again.
