What is Google Panda and where did it come from?

Panda, also known as Farmer, is a new indexing algorithm that started being rolled out in March 2011.  We know since it was released that several versions has since followed.

It seems to me that with the number of revisions, currently 2.5,  it looks like there is a little bit of trial and error going on.  Which is basically because Panda is scoring website / website content on real opinion.

Essentially a really big panel of people were asked to rank a set of websites.  They were comparing which ones they liked and trusted against those they did not.  The next stage was to figure the reasons why one website was preferred over another and develop an algorithm based on the same matrix and hey presto we have Panda

I do not know which websites were compared specifically but the results were focused on cleaning out bad websites to make room for good ones.

So what are the key areas that Panda is looking for:

1.  Good website design

Good website design means “clean” easy to read and not intrusive or designed to maximise advertising income.  The kind of website that loses are those where the content may be great but you need to wade through a lot of ad-ridden pages to access the information.  Advert pages enriched with actual content causes frustration and especially those that alter the adverts to look like content.

Before Panda design was not a ranking factor but the review panel highlighted the design of the website to be important.  Of course the result now is that if just one or two pages matches that criteria of a bad website i.e. a page that may contain a lot of links the result may well be that entire website is penalised and not just the offending page/s!

2.  Content, content and content

This has always been important but never so much as now.  There is a huge diference between SEO written copy and expert opinion.  SEO content is written for search engines whereas people are actually looking for expert opinion and advice.  I know this is tough as you want to sell your products or services but people do not necessarily want to be sold to.

So take an e-commerce website.  The golden rule is 3 clicks to checkout and that need not change but the journey should be on providing people what they want.  If buying a toy for a child they want it know that it is safe, they want to now that it will give pleasure and of course that it is appropriate for the age range.  So take these considerations and add images that fit the requirements backed up by full information.

I do a lot of diy round the house and I use screwfix.co.uk.  Screwfix is great if you know what you want but this weekend my child broke a wash basin and cut his hand.  Now I happen to have a wash basin so I want to replace the broken one with the other.  I also want to move the basin, it is in a downstairs cloakroom next to the kitchen, to make room for a washing machine which means I can use the kitchen space for a freezer..

So back to the point.  I am looking for a flexible hose to fit a 15mm pipe on one end to am 8mm connection to the basin.  I think I have it but the information available on the page does tell me anything about its application or what else I may need.  I know by looking at the basin that the funny looking thing at the small end, as pictured, does  not match anything I am looking at on the basin.

The result is that I can not commit to buy online because I am not confident enough I have found the right thing.  As a consequence Screwfix loses a sale and I have to wait to fix my basin.

What is frustrating to me is look at how much space there is on the right of the picture.  They could have tried harder and anticpated that potential buyers may need a bit more to help them buy.

3.  Analytics data

Google Panda is tapped into data about your website.  It is measuring your bounce rate as a primary guide to your content.  Bounce is measure as a percentage of those visitors who arrived at your website and decided not to stay almost immediately or after just one page view.  A normal bounce rate is around 50% so anything above 60% is bad and anything below 50% is good.

Google see similar pages. Sorry Rand I cut your head off..

How many pages were viewed?  For those who did not bounce how many pages did they view and for how long.  The good / bad ratio will depend on the subject and Google will compare your website to others it thinks are similar.  You can view who Google is comparing you too by adding a chrome widget “see Google similar pages”.

4. Click through rate

How many click through to your website from search results?  This matters and if it is low then you will rank less than those who rank better.

What is Google Panda?

The thing about Google Panda is that it is a good, no great, thing.  How many times have you been frustrated trying to find something but all you get is directory systems or wikipedia?

If your website has been impacted let us know using the comment form.  The thing is that your Google analytics account will provide all the information you need to fix any problems and in doing so will maximise your Internet exposure for your business.  Embrace Panda and if you are not sure how call me.

My thanks to SEOMOZ for inspiring these thoughts and the video for more information is below:

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Yahoo! Will Google buy it?

Reported today yesterday (23/10/11) in the Wall Street Journal. It was earlier reported that Microsoft were talking to two pension funds to raise cash to buy it. Apparently Microsoft is not really interested in owning it but looking to recoup some cash by acting as financier.

Google is talking to a couple of private equity firms. Their interest is interested in passing through advertising across Yahoo.

Read the full story

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SEO Planning is the first step toward achieving results.

This essential element is often disregarded.  All senior manger realise the importance of “knowing your market”.  The Internet market is however a little different as what lies behind the website is often critical to success.

The Internet market is driven by search engines and the devices search engines use do not consider the size of the business.  Instead search engines focuses on the relevance of the structure,  content and reputation of a website to satisfy what people are searching for.

For example by not having the correct structure your website may never be seen in search result for mobile users.  Why?  If your website is to slow or does not render well on a mobile device then you will have lost the mobile user market.  As mobile Internet is on the increase this is certainly not desirable.

In our “Planning and Monitoring” we research the top ten traffic generating keywords as the first stage.  There is little point in investing in obtaining top search result positions for “dead end” keywords.

We look at the full range of options provided by Google Insights to ascertain seasonality and trends over 4 years but also what is “hot” and rising over the last 90 days:

On establishing the top ten keywords we then research the top ten competitors for each of the keywords.  We divide the top ten competitors  into two genres true competitors and influencers.  For example if I were BP then Shell would be a true competitor.  However, chances are for any given keyword there will be those that do not compete for business but are blocking a top ten position.  The most obvious “blocker” is WikiPedia and whilst it is a blocker it is also an influencer.  Contributing to WikiPedia is a good thing to build your website reputation.

Our research also considers who in the top ten could be an ally.  For example a comparison website may be an excellent alternate rout to market.  Once we have profiled the top ten websites for each of the top ten keywords we can view the market share that each website has across market. Individual profiles are created for each competitor and is compared to your existing website.  This allows us to view Key Performance Indicators (KPI) on an “like for like” against each competitor but also for each keyword and the entire market.

The KPIs provide us with a benchmark of the entire market, individual keyword and each competitor that we must better in order to achieve results.

SEO Planning is the first step toward achieving results but monitoring allows us to continually improve.  The results of the initial planning stage is refreshed frequently to measure market change refining the benchmark to provide continuous improvement.

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SEO Consultancy services  provides your business with an in depth vision of your existing performance and future potential.

Many businesses are frustrated by the lack of return of their Internet presence. SEO consultancy services provides businesses with a clear understanding of what is working and what could be improved.

1. Establishing current performance
2. Full Internet Marketing audit / Defining target markets

1. Current performance

The first stage of seo consultancy services is to understand where the business sits currently:

• How many visitors does the website receive?
• where did those visitors come from
• How many visitors were lost (commonly referred to as “bounce rate”)?
• How many of the retained visitors were converted?

Retention rate, on average, should be 50% or higher and conversion rate should be in the region of 15 -30% for a consumer website. Although conversion rates will be higher for niche products/services and significantly lower for high value items.

The important first step is to focus on the retention and conversion rates. It is often possible to at least double conversion rates by increasing retention. I.e. If your business is losing 80% of total visitors but your conversion rate is 20% there will be a quick win in improving the content to retain more visitors,

For example your website attracts 1,000 visitors per day. You retain 20% leaving you with 200 active visitors you convert 25% of those retained visitors into sales. Your average sale price is £300 hence your daily income is £15,000. By improving content we increase retention levels to 60% and using the same conversion rate business increases to £45,000.

Given the above example you can see that by actually improving what you have can have a significant impact on your business within a very short time frame.

However, this is by no means the end of the story. The next step is to understand where your business sits within the market and the greater opportunity that may exist.

2. SEO consultancy services / Defining target markets

In “1. Current performance” above we established quick wins by tuning content to retain and convert more visitors into business. In this section we address the market opportunities that already exist.

The Internet has an enormous population of people that turn to it to find goods and/or services they require usually within a short timeframe. For consumer items this could be 7-10 days for services like insurance it is more likely to be 2-3 days and of course for B2B sales your business needs to be highly visible in order to be considered.

The question is “how to align your business to this, or these, lucrative markets?” Research is the answer and there is no need for a Crystal ball. Unlike any other market large amounts of data exist in terms of keywords used by people to find what they are looking for. You can even get seasonality and trending data.

The downside is that you need to know where to look, what to look for and be able to interpret what you get into:

• Market size
• Business opportunity
• Competitor analysis
• SWOT analysis of your existing website per competitor and overall per keyword market

In much the same way as it was necessary to improve your content to retain your existing visitors in 1. above. It is now necessary to develop content to attract visitors from new markets.

When researching potential markets the focus is on the business opportunity. Obtaining new markets is expensive and time consuming therefore it is very important to know what the return is likely to be before committing.

Market size

Market size relates to the number of searches made for each keyword per month. Often it is necessary to identify a foundation “keyword” and “tails” for example a foundation keyword may be “SEO” and tails for this would be “SEO Services”, “SEO Services UK” etc.

As of today the keyword “SEO” creates somewhere between 5million and 9million searches per month. It is prudent to work with the lesser of the numbers given as they are only a guide and only to used to provide an order of magnitude.

The numbers above relate to global searches which is interesting to know but not necessarily relevant if your business target the EU or the UK.

The UK search volumes for SEO is circa 500K given a high of 1million. However as stated above the numbers we have discussed so far are the foundation keyword “SEO” which whilst a target it may take considerably longer to compete for a foundation keyword as opposed to a long tail keyword.

The strategy is to achieve good search positions for relevant keyword markets to obtain qualified traffic that will create revenue growth.

long tail keywords build toward obtaining search positions for the foundation keyword. Hence the traffic volumes for ”SEO services UK” is circa 6-8,000 searches per month and “SEO consulting” is around 20,000.

Long tail keywords are easier to target and form an important part of the strategy to successfully target the foundation keyword.

Business Opportunity

In “market size” above we established that the market for the most relevant foundation keyword provides a total market size. As foundation keywords will take a significant amount of time and effort to achieve good marjet positioning the sensible approach is to target long tail keywords based on the foundation.

The business opportunity excludes the foundation keyword but includes the top ten most relevant long tail keywords. To keep this simple using “SEO” as the example we established that the market size for “SEO” globally is 5million searches per month and the UK search volume is approximately 10% at 500,000 monthly searches. As such we need to identify the top ten long tail keywords that will work toward to achieving a good market position for “SEO” but also generate a respectable return in terms for growth now.

1. SEO Services – average search volume (ASV) 65,000
2. SEO UK – asv 44,000
3. SEO Company – asv 33,000
4. SEO Companies – asv 22,000
5. SEO Firms – asv 14,500
6. SEO Consulting – asv 14,000
7. SEO engine optimisation – asv 12,000
8. SEO Specialist – asv 12,000
9. SEO Analysis – asv 9,000
10. SEO Services UK – asv 6,000

Given the above we can now start to look at the business opportunity.

To do this we also need to establish market share based on where the website appears for each keyword. To demonstrate this refer to the chart below.

seo search top ten position market share – Click to enlarge

The chart above tells us what traffic volume we can expect from each of the top ten keywords for each position, within the top ten position for page one, we achieve in search results.

To complete the exercise it is now possible to use the volume data and apply the retention and conversion data we established in “1. Current performance” above.

Using the same data the chart below predicts the associated revenue for each keyword for each position.

seo search top ten position revenue share – Click to enlarge

Using the charts above it is clear that the market opportunity for the selected keywords would bring an incremental revenue stream of between £120,000 at position 10 per month to a much more desirable £2,8million per month at position 1.

Review

In 1. Current performance we looked at short term gains by increasing retention by targeting content to your existing visitors. In retaining more visitors we saw a potential growth from £15,000 per day to £45,000 by actually doing very little.

In 2. Full Internet Marketing audit / Defining target markets we were able to target relevant traffic streams to generate incremental and sustainable growth to potentially £2,8million per month.

Combined monthly revenues would climb to circa £3million per month. this may be a good time to introduce seasonality to convert the above into potential cashflow estimates.

keyword “seo” trend 2011 – Click to enlarge

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How to diagnose what is going with your website if you notice a drop in search ranking.. Or your website drops off the Google index altogether.Many people are aware that Google has / is changing the Googlebot search algorithm with the rollout of Panda. But not all drop in search ranking problems are down to search engine changes.

Matt Cutts explains what to do and where to check what is happening to your website  of you notice a drop in search ranking in the video below.

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Category grid view gallery plugin for WordPress security fixed

Category grid view gallery was removed from the WordPress plugins due to a security risk caused by Timthumb component.

This download version has removed the security risk by modifying timthumb as per how-to-fix-the-security-issue-in-timthumb article.

Download and use Category grid view gallery knowing that this mod should have removed the security risk. However Winning Inch accepts no responsibility under any circumstances if a security vulnerability remains.

To see it in action Winning Inch portfolio

Download “Category grid view gallery” – with timthumb security mod

In addition i’d recommend using “Timthumb Scanner” WordPress plugin as an extra precaution.

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