Are you confused about the difference between Penguin and an Unnatural Links penalty? Not sure whether you should be disavowing your links? Wondering whether you should file for reconsideration? Well...you're not alone! SEOmoz have spent a good amount of time answering questions and learning from others.

A confession - I messed up too.  

I am insanely obsessed with understanding Penguin, Unnatural Links Penalties and Panda. I really don't know why. But it all started because I made a mistake. I was part of an SEO forum discussion in which a site owner felt they had been affected by the Penguin algorithm. I told him to clean up his bad links and then file for reconsideration. A senior member of the forum rightfully corrected me and said that I was giving incorrect advice. And he was right! As I will discuss further on in this article, filing for reconsideration is not going to help a Penguin hit site. I gave some bad advice and I am grateful that I was corrected. What that correction did was make me realize that Penguin and Unnatural Links Penalties are confusing. A lot of SEOs, myself included at the time, had a lot to learn about these issues. I made a decision that day that I would learn everything I could about algorithm changes and Google penalties.

A Brief Description of Penguin, Unnatural Links and Panda

Before we start answering questions, here is some fundamental information about Penguin, Unnatural Links Penalties and Panda:

The Penguin Algorithm

On April 24, 2012, Google announced "Another Step to Reward High Quality Sites", an algorithm change aimed at fighting against webspam. The algorithm change was first called "The Webspam Algorithm" but eventually began to go by the name of "Penguin". This algorithm severely affected sites that had widespread keyword stuffing and participation in link schemes. Matt Cutts, head of webspam at Google, eventually admitted on Twitter that links are "a primary area to monitor" when you have been affected by Penguin.

What most SEOs believe is that one of the primary causes of Penguin is when sites create easily made links containing keywords as anchor text from low quality places such as article marketing sites, bookmarks and do-follow comments.

Unnatural Links Penalties

These penalties are manual penalties that Google can place on sites when they determine that a site is widely attempting to manipulate the search engine results by creating links. These penalties are manual as opposed to Penguin which is algorithmic. So, what causes a site to be hit with an unnatural links warning?

Most webmasters believe that if someone files a spam report against you, then this will open up your site for a manual review. Some have speculated that Google monitors some of the more competitive niches such as "payday loans", "car insurance", casino sites, etc. and manually checks for unnatural links. No one knows for sure.

The Panda Algorithm

The Panda Algorithm was created by Google in an attempt to cause low quality sites to be displayed much lower in the search results. When Panda first hit, it was an unnamed algorithm. Many named it the "Farmer update" as it seemed to be aimed at content farms that ranked well as a result of scraping content from other sites. Most SEOs believe that sites affected by Panda have issues with on page quality as opposed to the quality of their links as in Penguin and Unnatural Links penalties. Sites that have been affected by Panda often have significant amounts of duplicated content (either on their own site or more commonly, from other sites) and also thin content. Thin content is usually a page that consists of very few words. If a site contains a lot of duplicate and thin content then Google sees little reason to show this site prominently in its search results. An entire site can be severely demoted because of Panda even if only parts of the site have duplicate and thin content.

Now let's cover some of the points where people are the most confused about these issues.

What is the difference between Penguin and an Unnatural Links Penalty?

Both of these issues have to do with unnatural links. In both cases, the use of keywords as anchor text can be a factor. However, the main difference between the two is that Penguin is an algorithmic issue while Unnatural Links penalties are manual. A manual penalty is one that is levied by a human being, one site at a time. For example, a competitor could file a spam report on you which could result in a Google Webspam employee looking at your site. The employee could look at your backlinks and see that you have been engaging in practices that are considered as link schemes. As such, they may decide to levy a manual penalty on your site.

Penguin is not levied one site at a time. Google has created an algorithm which is designed to programmatically find sites that have been engaging in unnatural link building tactics. When Penguin updates, if your site has been flagged as a site that is engaging in webspam, then your site will be affected on the date of the update. No human being is directly involved in determining whether your site is affected. As a point of interest, I have heard some SEOs who have done testing and believe that Penguin can affect a site on any day and not just Penguin refresh days. So far, in sites that I have seen, it seems that Penguin can only affect a site on a Penguin refresh day. The reality is that at this point no one knows for certain whether or not a site can be affected by Penguin on a date other than a Penguin refresh date.

Do Penguin, Unnatural Links and Panda affect the whole site or just part of the site?

Penguin: Penguin usually affects a site on a page and keyword level. Let's say that you have a page called example.com/greenwidgets/ and you have been building links to this page all containing the anchor text, "green widgets". If Penguin affected you, then it would mean that this particular page would no longer rank well for "green widgets". Penguin generally does not affect an entire site. However, quite often when sites have been affected by Penguin, they have built many anchor texted links, possibly for many different keywords all to the homepage. This can mean that the homepage will not rank for a number of terms.

Unnatural Links: A manual unnatural links penalty can affect the entire site, or just a page, or even just one keyword. Sometimes a site can be penalized and be totally removed from the Google index. Other times, the site can still be in the index but not be shown in the first 10 pages for any of its keywords. Or, sometimes the penalty will not be as severe and may only affect one or two keywords. Here is a quote from Matt Cutts regarding a site that was penalized on a keyword level:

The site in this example would not be able to rank for the keywords that they had used as anchors for sites that embedded their widgets.

Panda: Panda can affect an entire site, or sometimes one section such as a news blog on the site. Panda does not tend to affect just single pages of a website. If you have a site that has some good content, but a lot of thin and duplicate content, then the Panda filter can cause the entire site to have trouble ranking, not just the thin and duplicate pages.

Should you file for reconsideration if you have been affected by Penguin, Unnatural Links or Panda?

Penguin: No. A reconsideration request is only meant for sites that have a manual warning. If you have a manual warning then you will have a message in your WMT. (See the image next to the section above on Unnatural Links.) If you have been affected by Penguin, then, because this is an algorithmic issue, having a Google employee review the site will not help.

Unnatural Links: Yes. If you have a manual warning in your WMT then once you have done the work required to clean up the site (see below) then you will need to file for reconsideration.

Panda: No. See Penguin. Panda is also an algorithmic change and a reconsideration request will not help you recover.

Should you be using the disavow tool if you have been affected by Penguin, Unnatural Links or Panda?

On October 16, 2012, Google released the disavow tool which allowed webmasters to essentially have Google add an invisible "nofollow" to certain links that are pointing to their site. Since the release of this tool, there have been so many webmasters asking questions in Q&A as well as other SEO forums wondering if they should be disavowing their links. Many have become paranoid about their links and want to disavow everything that looks suspicious. I've seen people who wanted to disavow a great link because it was site-wide. I've seen others who wanted to disavow a pile of links even though they are already nofollowed links. There is a lot of confusion around the use of the disavow tool. This is probably why the disavow tool comes with this disclaimer:

Penguin: Google vaguely suggests that the disavow tool could be useful for a Penguin hit site. In their blog post about the disavow tool, they say the following:

"Q: Should I create a links file as a preventative measure even if I haven’t gotten a notification about unnatural links to my site?

A: If your site was affected by the Penguin algorithm update and you believe it might be because you built spammy or low-quality links to your site, you may want to look at your site's backlinks and disavow links that are the result of link schemes that violate Google's guidelines."

Most SEOs believe that if you have been affected by Penguin then you should use the disavow tool to discount the unnatural links to your site. At the time of writing this, Penguin has not refreshed since the disavow tool was released. (The tool was released October 16th and the last Penguin refresh was October 5th.) What this means is that we do not have any proof yet as to whether or not disavowing links will help a site to recover from Penguin. Hopefully it will, but there may be other factors that need to be addressed as well such as on page issues like keyword stuffing.

Unnatural Links: Yes. This is what the disavow tool was made for. Google says, in regards to a manual unnatural links penalty, "If you’ve done as much as you can to remove the problematic links, and there are still some links you just can’t seem to get down, that’s a good time to visit our new Disavow links page."

Panda: No. As Panda generally does not have anything to do with backlinks, disavowing links to your site is not likely to help.

Do you need to manually remove links?

Penguin: While removing links is probably a good idea, it is likely not necessary. Because Penguin is an algorithm, to recover you don't need to show a human being evidence that you have worked hard to remove links. Most SEOs who are experienced with Penguin issues believe that disavowing your problematic links will help and that physically removing the links is not necessary. With that being said, if the bad links are under your control and easy to remove, then it is a good idea to do so.

Unnatural Links: When trying to recover from a manual unnatural links penalty, it is not enough to just disavow the bad links. Google wants to see evidence that you have tried to get as many of the unnatural links removed as possible. When you file for reconsideration, one of the first things that the webspam team member does is check a number of the links that they have flagged as unnatural and see how many of them you have gotten physically removed. For the unnatural links that you are unable to get removed because the webmaster didn't reply, or because they wanted a large sum of money or for whatever other reason, then you can disavow those links.

Removing an unnatural links penalty from a site can take a lot of work. If you are struggling to remove a penalty from your site, or if you are an SEO who would like to get involved in doing penalty removal work, I have documented everything that I do in order to get penalties removed in my book (see bio section for link).

Panda: No, it is not believed that any links need to be removed for sites affected by Panda.

When will you recover?

Penguin: Most SEOs believe that you will not be able to recover a Penguin hit site until Penguin refreshes again. Google announced at SMX West that in 2013 there would be a major Penguin update but did not say when this would happen. There are some people who believe that they have seen Penguin hit sites recover on a day other than a refresh day. There are ways to recover a Penguin hit site without waiting for a refresh. For example, if you had a "green widgets" page that had been affected by Penguin because you built anchor text using the phrase "green widgets", you could build a new page called "buying-green-widgets" and get new, good quality links to that page and possibly rank again for this term. The original page would not rank, but the new one could. The problem with this is that getting new good quality links is difficult. Google wants you to earn links and not make them yourself.

John Mueller, a Google employee about whether or not it was possible to recover a Penguin hit site outside of a Penguin refresh and here is what he said:

"+Marie Haynes theoretically, in an artificial situation where there’s only one algorithm (which is, in practice, never the case), if a site is affected by a specific algorithm, then the data for that algorithm needs to be updated before it would see changes. In practice, while some elements might be very strong depending on what was done in the past, there are always a lot of factors involved, so significantly improving the site will result in noticeable changes over time, as we recrawl & reindex the site and it’s dependencies, as well as reprocess the associated signals. So yes, you’d need to wait for the algorithm to update if it were the only thing involved, but in practice it’s never the only thing involved so you’re not limited to waiting.

Also keep in mind that for long-running processes (be it algorithm updates like this, or other higher-level elements in our algorithms), it’s never a good idea to limit yourself to small, incremental improvements; waiting to see if “it’s enough” can take a while, so I’d recommend working to take a very good look at the issues you’ve run across, and working to make very significant improvements that will be more than enough (which users will appreciate as well, so there’s that win too)."

A full discussion on ways to recover from Penguin is outside of the scope of this article.

Unnatural Links: Once you file for reconsideration, it will take anywhere from 3-14 days to hear back from Google. I have had it take as long as six weeks, but this was just after the disavow tool was released and Google probably had a large backlog of sites to review. If you get the wonderful "manual spam action revoked" message, for some sites recovery can happen in a couple of days. Depending on how severe the penalty was, it can take significantly longer such as several months.

There are some sites that can have a penalty revoked but not see any increase in rankings at all. This generally happens when sites have no good links to prop the site up. If your site's backlink profile consisted of 99% self made links and you have removed or disavowed almost all of those links then you will need to get good, quality links to your site in order to rank again. Gone are the days of being able to rank well on poor quality links.

Some sites can still appear to be penalized after their manual penalty is lifted if they are also under the effects of Penguin. In most cases, it is believed that the work that is done to recover from an unnatural links penalty will also get you out of Penguin trouble. However, you'll need to see a Penguin refresh in order to start ranking well again.

Panda: Again, a full discussion on Panda recovery is outside of the scope of this article. Once you have done what is necessary to fix Panda issues such as duplication and thin content, then many sites will recover with the next Panda refresh. However, I have seen some sites that have taken several Panda refreshes in order to recover. As of March, 2013, Matt Cutts stated that Panda will not be doing large regular refreshes as we have been used to but instead it will now be regularly rolled into the regular algorithm. I expect that this means that Panda hit sites can recover much sooner now once the work is done.

Source: Moz.com

When you create a website, you’re not doing it for the sake of having virtual space. You’re building it to run a business; to earn an income.

So what you need is a massive audience. You achieve this type of audience when you manage to increase organic traffic towards your website.

What is Organic Traffic?

While many internet marketers, SEO strategists, bloggers, etc. might be familiar with organic traffic, there are still newbies entering the internet industry with little to no knowledge of what organic traffic is.

So, for those individuals, organic traffic is defined below:

Organic traffic is free traffic originating from search engines such as Google. It’s the best traffic to receive because it means your website is actually being visited by people interested in your product or service.

With organic traffic, there’s no need to pay for your site to be listed. Instead, use the appropriate long tail keywords and a brilliant SEO strategy to increase traffic to your website.  

Tips on Increasing Organic Website Traffic

Whether you’re an internet newbie or veteran, the following tips will increase organic traffic to your website:

• Choose long tail keywords appropriate for your content: When you place long tail keywords throughout your web content, search engines will list your website on its results pages whenever web visitors search for your particular keywords.

That’s why it’s important to choose long tail keywords instead of short keywords. For long tail keywords will have a better combination of the words searchers type into the search engines.

• Participate in social media: Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or even the latest craze, Pinterest, is entirely up to you. Just use these social networks to increase organic traffic towards your site.

Keep the internet world up to date on all the latest details happening at your web address via social media.

• Keep your website’s content fresh: When you keep the content on your website updated, search engines consider this a good step towards targeting visitors to your site; thus, causing your site to become indexed. In return, you’ll see higher rankings.

• Increase organic traffic by building links: Links are favorable in Google’s eyes. They’re viewed as evidence that your site is popular and important to people.

• Submit to link directories: Link directories such as Google and DMOZ.org can generate some traffic to your domain. If you have a blog, submit it to blog directories such as Technorati and Blog Catalog.

Now that you know how to increase organic traffic to your website, get started in building your audience now!

Source:blog.hittail

I get asked this frequently – what works with SEO?  And the flip side to that coin, around what to avoid.  Before we start looking at some of these factors, it’s very important that you remember that for any given search algorithm, there are hundreds (or more) of factors at play to determine rankings.  No list can encompass them all, partly because of readability, but mostly because it’s proprietary information.

Additionally, factors can be relative.  If factor A is at a certain level, then factors B and C contribute accordingly.  If factor A’s value drops or increases, that causes changes to how the signals from B and C are integrated and thus the final result changes – sometimes minutely, sometimes dramatically.  It's a bit like a manual transmission in a car.  You can travel at 40 mph using 1st gear, 2nd gear or 3rd.  Still the same 40 mph, but due to the different gear ratios engaged with each individual selection (1st, 2nd or 3rd gear), the engine speed will vary, while maintaining that 40 mph.

In fact, it’s worth noting that instead of chasing SEO at the on page and technical levels, many would be better served by trying to influence people to impact some of those important signals and factors.  Rather than try to guess at information which is not ever shared, turning to working on influencing people and developing a repeatable pattern that works, is often a better bet.

If you can influence visitors to your site to share a link or tweet about your product by placing relevant social sharing options in the best locations (which you determine through testing, not guessing), you not only get the value of their efforts and actions directly (their friends seeing it and clicking through to you), but you also reap the rewards of how those signals impact the search algorithms.  In the end, you have discovered a process that’s repeatable as well – if you post a positive, funny article, for example, more people share it.  The process then becomes: write positive, funny article, post, use optimized social sharing option placements.

And that is infinitely easier to figure out than to try to guess what’s going on inside an engine’s algorithm.

But what things matter?  Well, let’s look at the common things, many of which are often overlooked or shortcuts taken.

What to pay attention to:

•     Title tags
•     Meta Descriptions
•     Clean URLs
•     Images and Alt descriptions (also called alt tags)
•     H1 tags
•     Rel=Canonical
•     Robots.txt
•     Sitemaps
•     Social sharing options
•     Unique content
•     Depth of content
•     Matching content type to visitor expectations (text, images, video, etc.)
•     Usability Page load times (to a certain point – faster is great, but not at the expense of usability and usefulness)
•     Crawlability (AKA discoverability, so can we actually get to all your content)
•     News – if you are actually a new site, submit for inclusion

What to skip:

•   Meta Keywords (fill them in if you like, keep it short and relevant, but not a big ranking factor)
•     Duplicate URLs
•     Overly long URLs (no set number, but you’ve all seen these)
•     Cloaking (comes down to your intent, but risky business for sure)
•     Link buying
•     Selling links
•     Link and like farms
•     Three way links
•     Content duplication content
•     Auto following in social media

These list are, as suggested at the start of this article, not full lists.  These lists are also not in any particular order, as what matters in one instance will differ from other instances.  Some items will apply to you, some might not.  Some you may know already, others you may need to research to learn more about.  And taking something like H1 tags from the “pay attention to list” and saying “Yeah, we have those” does not mean you’re done.  You have to understand why an H1 tag is important to a reader, and earn how to write optimized content for them.  Just “having” a tag in place doesn’t mean yours are doing everything they can for you.

Source:Bing

Ten SEO Mistakes

Here are the top ten erroneous tactics on my SEO list of shame. Employ these at your website’s peril!

1 Keyword stuffing

I can’t think of anything worse than poorly put together website copy. Website copy that is repeated over and over again just looks poor. I'm sure you hate to see bad website copy too.

Did you see what I did there? I’m not that bad a writer; I’m just making a point.

Keyword stuffing refers to the shady tactic of stuffing a web page full of words and phrases in an attempt to manipulate a site’s rankings in Google’s search results.

Repeating a word or phrase intentionally won’t boost your rankings. You’ll attract Google for sure, swiftly followed by a kick down the results pages.

2 Broken links

A broken link is the name given to a hyperlink that no longer points to its intended destination. You’ve been won over by an article’s sales spiel and you’re desperate to see what’s on the other side of the link, like the example below:

Obviously anybody in their right mind would click a link that promised to make look 10 years younger, and then, argh! It’s broken!

Sites naturally accumulate broken links: however they’re a major nuisance to your visitors and Google doesn’t like them either. But, if they’re so natural, why does Google penalize you for them?

It’s because bad links will earn you a bad reputation. And people with online reputations aren't viewed as authorities on anything (apart from getting bad reputations, that is).

Anyway, Google downgrades rankings of sites with lots of issues like this, so don’t be a rebel without a cause. Do some regular housekeeping on your site.

3 Copied copy

Do you remember instances from your school days when a student copied another student’s work? It was considered the sin of all sins. There were sharp intakes of breath when little Johnny cheats-a-lot stole Perfect-Pat-with-a-cherry-on-top’s work.

When performing SEO audits for clients’ websites it’s common to find that another website has ripped off all of their original content. Or worse still, it’s the other way round.

Crafting unique, compelling copy can seem like a tall order. But stealing it from a competitor is not only illegal: Google can push your site so far down the rankings that no-one will ever find it, and in severe cases, de-index the whole website, so just don’t do it.

4 Duplicate content

I’m talking about duplication within your own site, not stealing copy from other websites. Duplication happens in a number of forms so I’ve separated two of the most common types below.

Luckily these issues are easily solved, so don’t take an axe to your site just like that!

4 Duplicate content that appears in more than one location

This type of duplication is detrimental to SEO, but often happens on large sites or ecommerce sites that have several pages listing the same set of products. Multiple pages with the same content present a search engine with a number of problems:

• Which version should I retrieve for the search query?
• Which versions should I include/exclude from my indices?
• Which version should I direct the link juice to? Or should I just spread it across the variations?

All of the above can cause lower rankings and a loss in traffic.

The most effective method to combat this is to implement 301 redirect rules from the lower quality pages to the preferred web page.

Non unique title tags and meta descriptions

This is a repeat offender. I regularly see websites with the same page titles on many, if not all of their web pages.

Sometimes CMSs (content management systems like Drupal and Joomla) auto-generate page titles, but that doesn’t mean you should let this continue. Many SEOs will tell you the title tag is one of the most important on-page SEO factors. Because it’s true!

Page titles should be unique and reflect the content of the web page so that:

• A search engine crawler can index it correctly
• It tells a searcher that your content is relevant to what they're looking for
• It makes sense and looks click-worthy in tweets

Also, you shouldn’t overlook meta descriptions. They’re your web page’s sales pitch in the search results, so you should aim to make these as persuasive and descriptive as possible within the 160 character limit.

5 Links from non-credible sources

Links to your site are like votes of confidence. Imagine George Foreman telling you that you have a pretty good right hook. You’d feel like a champ. It’s a real compliment coming from someone who actually knows a thing or two about boxing.

This is the type of quality that you should focus your link building efforts on. Although it’s highly unlikely that I, a seven stone female, would be a good match for a heavyweight champion, it will be a lot easier for you to get a link from a credible source related to your industry.

Although links from quality sites are harder to get than links from directories, quantity should not be a substitute for quality. A link from an authoritative blog is more likely to boost your rankings and traffic than a couple of hundred links from low quality sources.

6 Meta keyword tags

Webmasters who still use meta keywords are like someone insisting their nylon tracksuit is a credible fashion statement. At one point, long ago, search engine algorithms took meta keywords into account, but now they have a negligible impact on SEO.

Meta keywords can be found in the header element in a website’s HTML code:

They’re an inadvertent way of publicizing your digital strategy to rivals who can take the keywords, input them into a pay per click campaign and steal your visits, so don't use them. Ever.

7. Avoiding analytics

After you’ve implemented your terrible tactics, why not neglect to measure your website’s data?

Seriously, if you’re not measuring your website’s data then you cannot possibly have any business objectives. Surely you’ll want to know which areas of your site are performing well and not so well in order to grow and optimize your site better?

Setting up conversion goals and weekly reports are only the beginning. You’ll need to monitor which phrases are converting, rather than terms that are driving most traffic.

Make sure you have Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools configured to your website, so you’re able to analyze your data in specific detail.

8. Not optimized with the right keywords

Once you’ve built your website or blog, you’ll need to populate your pages with words that not only suit the purpose of your site and match the products you sell: they should also be the words that reflect what people actually type into search engines.

So if you’re a party planner, for example, you probably don’t want to describe yourself as an “organizer of social gatherings” on your site. To make sure that you're using the keywords that people are actually search with, check out the Wordtracker Keyword Tool

It may seem obvious to write website copy that will reflect your customers' vocabulary, but you’d be surprised how many companies try to rank for totally unrelated keywords. They’re either enormous fans of Magritte or they REALLY don’t want people to visit their site.

Aim to be as specific as possible. Using broad keywords may yield large amounts of visits but it may not be the type of traffic that converts.

9 Not allowing your site to be crawled

Matt Cutts, Head of Search Spam at Google, recently cited this as one of the biggest mistakes people make when creating their websites.

In a video about basic SEO mistakes Cutts explains that if you make your content difficult for a search engine crawler to find, Google can't index it and won’t rank it.

By configuring Google and Bing Webmaster Tools to your site, accessibility to it is constantly monitored.

10 Irrelevant anchor text links

Anchor text is the name given to the clickable hyperlink text on a web page.

Creating cleverly phrased anchor text links is a coveted skill in the SEO world because they’re the main source of food for a search engine crawler.

Going from page to page, a crawler uses links as indicators of the theme of the pages it’s heading to – and how to rank them. So whenever I see click here used as an anchor text link, I see a wasted opportunity to build a link.

Tailoring your anchor text links to include keywords that you want to rank for can be tedious, and you’ll have to vary the pattern of anchor text so as to not attract suspicion from Google – but it’s something that you should definitely get into the habit of.

 Zero Recovery From Google's Panda Update

A couple weeks ago Seroundtable ran a poll asking Did You Recover From Panda? With over 500 responses. 

In short, 85% of those who were allegedly hit by the Panda update has seen zero improvement since they have been hit. 5% of those who were allegedly hit said they had a total recovery. 9% of those who were allegedly hit said they had a partial recovery.

Like I said before, I really think no one has recovered fully from this Google update - not yet at least.

Here is the full chart, also adding in those who responded that it was not applicable to them. I will be sharing the full results at a long presentation.

Source:Seroundtable 

History of Google Panda Updates:

1. Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sep. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
26. Panda Update 26, July 18, 2013 (confirmed)

Source:searchengineland

Know what is Google' Panda Algorithm is About

Google Panda is a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites" and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. (-Wikipedia)

Panda is just one of the algorithms used by Google to rank web content in its search results. Google debuted its Panda algorithm on February 24, 2011, as part of its goal to improve the quality of its search results and show users quality content. (-brafton)

Google Panda is an update in google that checks all the search results and removes suspicious websites that are known to abuse the search engine optimization procedure by grabbing a too much optimized domain name for a website to be placed on top of search results. (-yahoo.answers).

Development of Google Panda

The name “Panda” comes from Google engineer Navneet Panda, who developed the technology that made it possible for Google to create and implement the algorithm.

The technology Navneet Panda pioneered allows the search giant to algorithmically assess websites by many of the same quality categories (including site speed and content’s uniqueness and value) initially used by Google’s human website testers. Additionally, marketers and site developers believe the Panda algorithm factors visitors’ site interactions into search rankings. This suggests high bounce rates,low dwell times and related factors are all signals to Panda that a website is low quality

Free Tools by Google For SEO

Although there are numerous SEO tools available across the Internet, one should always start with those offered directly by Google for free when creating a website. When put to good use, Google tools are extremely powerful and highly effective in helping your web pages index well with the right keywords in search results. Best of all, all the tools can be managed within just a single Google account (or Gmail account) and you can add as many websites as you have into it.

Google Analytics

Let’s begin with the more popular Google Analytics, which is mostly used to track details of visits to a website. However there are more to look at than just page view counts and number of visitors in your Analytics account. You will be able to see exactly how visitors reached your site through their inserted search keywords or from other sites that have linked to you, and also the country location of the visitors to help in geo targeting.

These data are extremely helpful in determining what keywords your web pages rank well on search results and what the visitors are actually looking for during their searches that may have brought them to your site. With all these information, you can easily target the right keywords and significantly boost incoming traffic. There are still a ton of features you can find in your Google Analytics account, see it for yourself.

Google Webmaster Tools

Next up we have the Google Webmaster Tools. This is a must have for every new website. Many people thought that they will have to wait for the search engine to find their website in order to get indexed but that is actually not the case. All you have to do is to submit and verify your website URL with Google through your Webmaster Tools account and your web page will start to show up in the search results in a matter of hours. You can also tell Google how to index your site properly by submitting a list of your inner page URLs using a sitemap.xml file as so to prevent duplicated results.

On top of that, the Webmaster Tools will show a list of perhaps broken links within your site and also a list of internal and external pages linking to your site.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

You may have thought that AdWords is made for managing pay-per-click ads with Google but there is also a little tool that you can find in your AdWords account called the “Keyword Tool” that you can use to research trends and popularity of specific keywords from specific countries. This tool basically tells you how competitive a keyword is in the market, how much people are willing to bid for those particular keywords, how much searches that have been done with those keywords in the past which all determine how popular the phrase or word is so you can find out if it is worth your while to optimize your site for it.

Google Insights for Search: 

With the help of this tool, you can identify search terms and explore your potential visitors based upon their search volume. Even, you can compare search volume patterns across various categories, specific regions and time frame for any search phrase. 

Google Alerts:

With the help of this tool, you will get emails when Google finds any new results, like newsletters, blogs, articles and web pages that are relevant to your search terms.

So there you have it, three of the most powerful SEO tools by Google that you can’t afford to miss. Continue reading this Google SEO Tools article for more detailed explanation and resources to even more SEO tools you can find on the web.

source:google-search-engine-optimization

+1s Have No Direct Impact On Rankings

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said once again that Google’s +1 data has no direct impact on their web search ranking algorithm. Moz published a story today named Amazing Correlation Between Google +1s and Higher Search Rankings in which Matt Cutts responded to in Hacker News thread saying, “correlation != causation.” 

He said that he is looking for the “politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings.” Matt then added, he debunked a similar correlation study done by Moz on Facebook likes influencing Google rankings. In short, Matt says it isn’t surprising content with more likes or +1s have better rankings. 

Matt explains, “If you make compelling content, people will link to it, like it, share it on Facebook, +1 it, etc.” “But that doesn’t mean that Google is using those signals in our ranking,” Cutts add. Matt advises, “rather than chasing +1s of content, your time is much better spent making great content.”

Source:Searchengineland

Top 10 Free Blogging Sites  

If you are thinking of creating a blog it’s a great idea. Blogs are a great way to share your knowledge, your discovery or just for fun some articles. The first thing to write a blog is to create a your own blogging site and then hosting it. But if you don’t want to get into the hassles of developing a site, hosting, Domain and deploying then you can choose any of the free blogging sites mentioned below.

Free Blogging Sites 1:- Blogger

Blogger is easy to use, most popular and beginners preferred blogging website and it is owned by google. Blogger provides many features like Template Designer UI by which you can tweak your blog’s appearance as much as you want, administrator interface which is very user friendly and top-notch integration with their Google account. The best thing about blogger is all these things are for free for which you need to pay in other blogging site. Blogger also provides you to have a custom domain for free and also provide your personal unique domain only for 10$. As it is owned by Google Adsense (google advertisement program to earn money) is very simple. With some SEO tips for blogger it can be a very good website to start with blogging.

Free Blogging Sites 2:- WordPress

Now you might have confused because I talked about WordPress before. But it is different as people are having fun with WordPress so WordPress used his own web development software and created WordPress.com to have fun. It is also one of the major blogging sites besides WordPress even better than that as I have experienced. You can choose your gorgeous themes, free SEO, anti-spam filters, traffic status and more. If you are not satisfied with it you can go premium (yeah premium) which includes upgraded web hosting resources, Domain name and more.

But the only problem is this you can’t add your Google Adsense or other advertisement on it. They have their own earning program but they don’t allow you others.

Free Blogging Sites 3:- HubPages

HubPages is one of the easiest, simplest, free and money making blogging site. Seriously if you can’t use it you need to buy Blogging for Dummies. You can write a blog about anything. Google and other search love HubPages because it won’t allow their publisher to publish duplicate content in their blogs and unique content means natural SEO. HubPages support third party apps like Google Analytics, Adsense and eBay ads. So if you are a good and original content writer HubPages is best for you. Even you can get google Adsense account approval quicker with HubPages.

Free Blogging Sites 4:- Blog.com

It is also based on WordPress web development software. It will give beautiful premium themes for free as well as advance plugins and unlimited bandwidth which we can only expect in self hosted blogs. But the problem is their free service show more ads than wordpress.com.

Free Blogging Sites 5:- Tumblr

Tumblr is a popular and micro-blogging with outstanding features like free custom domains, users can post text, images, videos, audio and more and amazing blogging themes.

You can connect your Facebook and twitter account. Tumblr supports many third party apps like Google Analytics, Adsense and Feedburner.

Free Blogging Sites 6:- Posterous Spaces

Posterous Spaces are a superb on-line blog publishing site which is almost like Tumblr.

Posterous Space has a wonderful privacy and viewing feature so that you can easily manage who can see what. Posterous Space is designed in such a way that user can post content as quickly as possible. It also has apps for Ios and Android Smartphone.

Free Blogging Sites 7:- LiveJournal

LiveJournal also known as LJ (Lame) offers blogging with a social networking. Means LiveJournal (LJ lame) is not only a blogging sit but also a social networking site. The features are nothing to brag about. But you can create networks, interact with other LiveJournal user and also participate in polls. Hmm not bad I guess.

Free Blogging Sites 8:- Weebly.com

Weebly.com is not just a blogging site. It is a website builder. Confused, I mean you can create your own website with its drag-and-drop interface. You can build your own blogging site

Free Blogging Sites 9:- Blogetery

Blogetery is a normal blogging website but it gives you payment to write blogs. You will get 90% of the profit, which way too much better than any other site. Blogetery is also a WordPress Based online blogging service with some 140 themes and the roughly 40 plugins for free.

Free Blogging Sites 10:- TypePad

TypePad Micro is also a free blog-publishing service. The user interface is easy and you can import/export blogs from many other blogging platforms. for

You can earn money with these free blogging sites. But if you really want to write blogs for earning money and want to be a professional blogger I won’t recommend you to use any of them. I would recommend you to create your own site with your unique domain name. If you are not a web site developer or technical person you can use WordPress.org. WordPress is the web development software which you can use to create a beautiful website or blog and it is free. There is a huge community for creating the templates and plugins which will do almost every work related to the development of the site.

But if you just need to post the blogs occasionally and just want to share your knowledge with a bit of earning for free, you can choose any of the above 10 free blogging sites which are the most popular among millions of active bloggers.