How Writers Recover From Google's Panda Update

The February 2011 Google Panda Update, as it is officially called, has caused a lot of concern for online writers and businesses with web sites.

A year later, the changes that I made, and the support of HubPages, the platform I write on, have both proven to work.

The modifications required to survive the Google changes have given me a better understanding of why Google needed to make this major adjustment to their algorithm.

Michael Wysz, a member of Google’s Product Quality team who works with webmasters, has given an important piece of advice. In short, get ride of low quality content.

I have made a number of changes not only to my Hubs (articles on HubPages), but also to pages on my business site. I had gone through many of my old articles and made the necessary improvements to those I decided to keep. I removed my content that was low quality based on analysis of my Google Analytics reports. HubPages had also enforced more stringent rules on quality.

By using my Google Analytics reports I was able to observe the traffic pattern on my Hubs. I have learned why certain things were not working and what changes to focus on making. I have a better understanding of why Google needed to make this major change to their algorithm.

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1. The use of Above The Fold Advertising made it obvious to readers that the page was focused on advertising. This may have turned off many readers, making them click away before reading anything below the ad. Google takes that short stay as an indication to lower the ranking.

2. The use of Kontera contextual ads was so displeasing to me that I only tried it for a short time. It creates irritating pop up ads when one hovers their mouse over the link. They don’t even have to click on it.

I had experimented with Kontera at one time. But I didn’t want to impose that on my readers so I removed them only after a short few days. Kontera never really worked well anyway. I found that most links were not related well to the context at all. I also found that it took away from the reader’s ability to follow the text.

In June 2011, HubPages had phased out Kontera. I think that was a really good move.

Learning from this, I realized I was making the same mistakes by using too many links in text on my own business site. Not Kontera, just plain textual links. But I did a lot of work there too, removing many textual links. I know now that they just annoy the reader. They want to be able to read what I am saying without thinking they need to click away to see what the link is all about. The text should contain all the important information in a single flow. We should not be sending the reader all over the place.

3. I think the HubKarma plan should be removed. I used this built-in link suggestion tool to add links to the text in some hubs. I was thinking I might get some extra revenue for passing readers to other Hubbers. And also to increase my HubKarma score just to feel successful (something that always drives me). But then again, this is the same thing as the problem with Kontera textual links. HubKarma never really helped chose appropriate links unless we worked hard at deciding which hubs to use.

I had to read the recommended hubs and then come back and include it or not. But I found a lot of other Hubbers were including links to hubs that didn’t even match the subject. They just did it because HubKarma recommended it and it was obvious that they didn’t have a clue what the other Hubber’s article was about.

I say this because I clicked on some of those links to see why they were linking to it. And I found hubs that were not related at all to the original subject that I was interested in. This left me with a sour taste for the original Hubber. Sorry, but some of them lost me as a follower for using HubKarma indiscriminately.

By the way, I still link to Hubs written by other Hubbers when I find they had written something appropriate to include along with my own article. But I don’t bother anymore with the HubKarma link suggestion tool. I find it easier to do it when I run across someone’s Hub in the course of reading and I think to myself, “I wrote a similar thing! I must refer my readers to this Hub too!” Then I go to my hub, edit it, and include the link.

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HubPages has made many important changes to their way of placing Ads and with the rules for placing ad capsules.

They also split all Hubbers into their own subdoman so each author has their own URL. This was done because Google said any low quality content can pull down the ranking of other content on the same site. By giving each Hubber their own subdomain, they are no longer effected by people who write spam or other low quality content.

They also introduced new ways to earn by publishing articles on this site. They worked out arrangements with eBay so that anyone can apply as an eBay affiliate within the HubPages Earnings Program.

They are obviously concerned about the quality of the HubPages’ site. I am glad to see that this is the case since I plan to have a long and rewarding future writing on HubPages.

These things seem to be helping. I especially have learned from all this. You might say I have a better knowledge of SEO now. But then again, the SEO rules have changed. So my prior knowledge (for what it’s worth) had to be modified.

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I personally had made changes to my business site to have less links within text that caused the reader to have trouble following along. I saw this helped with better page visit retention time. Meaning the reader stayed around longer. And I noticed more sales after making these changes. So I discovered that keeping the reader around longer translated into more actual sales.

As far as my hubs are concerned, I removed most of my Amazon and eBay ads. The problem with these ads was that once a reader clicks to Amazon or eBay, they are gone. I didn’t make any money yet and I won’t unless they buy something.

Pulling out the eBay and Amazon capsules leaves more attention to continuing to finish reading my articles. Google uses the length of time in a hub, or on any web page, to determine how useful or important that information is. They bring more traffic over time when they determine it is of value. They bring less or no traffic when it is of no value. Simple as that!

UPDATE: Since then I have added back Amazon and eBay capsules. It turned out that the subdomain split worked so well to increase traffic, that I decided to experiment with these again. HubPages did make a new rule that for every ad we needed at least 50 words in the Hub. So if you have 10 ads you need at least 500 words. Including these capsules had no negative effect and is showing some promise with extra income.

Another trick is to place all eBay and Amazon ad capsules near the bottom. So the reader has a chance to get through the entire Hub before leaving to buy something. It's a win-win as I see it.

In January 2012 Google announced yet another tweak to their algorithm. They reduce the ranking of pages that are too heavy on ads, especially above the fold, in contrast the the amount of content. In other words, the more quality content you have, the more ads are acceptable. Google is trying to eliminate pages that have mostly ads from appearing in search results.

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A lot of useless Hubs have disappeared from HubPages and I see that some other sites have eliminated pages that performed poorly as well. SheToldMe, a site that many Hubbers use for back links has toughened up enforcing their rules on what they accept. They delete anything that converts poorly, as James, who manages SheToldMe, says. This will benefit all the rest of us who use that site to list our articles. Other sites that fail to conform will eventually lose out.

I think that because HubPages has reacted so well with making the appropriate changes, and reducing any focus on poorly written Hubs, Google is responding by noticing the majority of existing Hubs contain useful content.

I even see more traffic from Yahoo and Bing. I find that to be an interesting side effect. I wonder if that is due to the changes I made, or the overall facelift of HubPages. Probably both!

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In June 2011 HubPages was testing placing their staff in their own subdomains because Google said it may help separate the good authors from the bad and therefore the poorly written Hubs won't pull down the ranking of those who write high quality articles.

The test showed improved traffic and in July all Hubbers were given the opportunity to move their Hubs in to their own subdomain.

HubPages covered all the bases by setting 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones. 301 redirects tell web browsers the new location so when someone enters the old address or clicks on a link to the old address, it automatically redirects to the new URL. 301 redirects also instruct search engines that this is a permanent change. So the search engines update their links.

Now that I've been in my own subdomain (glennstok.hubpages.com) I have found my traffic building up better than ever. As you can see from the chart below, my traffic had dropped to half after the Panda changes started in February. Then when we switched to the subdomains, my traffic started moving up.

I have also noticed increased traffic from other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, although I don’t know if there is any relationship to cause this. It may just be coincidence. But who’s complaining?

I had to make other changes once I was in my own subdomain. I removed a couple of low quality Hubs. I did that because Google makes it clear that poor quality anywhere on a site will pull down the entire site. So we won't be affected anymore by poor quality elsewhere on Hubpages.

But we still can be affected by our own poor quality since our subdomains are considered our own domain now. We are responsible for our own fate.

I did a major review of all my worst performing Hubs and I deleted those that were rated poorly. I had deleted a few and I made many updates to improve other Hubs.

Those Hubs rated at the top should not be ignored and I review those too, to be sure they continue to get quality traffic.

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I review my Google Analytics to see how long people stay in each Hub and what search they did to get there. If I see a high bounce rate then I analyze that specific Hub to try to find out what changes I need to make. Usually I discover it's because of tags that bring in the wrong traffic.

I find I need to be careful with single-word tags as they can match too many unrelated searches. All that does is make the visitor go away as soon as they see that it's not what they were looking for. The end result is that Google lowers the ranking based on too many short visits. And I think the HP Hub Score might be based on the length of stay too.

You may have quality Hubs, but if you're missing getting quality traffic then you won't have people sticking around long enough to end up clicking a few ads.

It takes a lot of hard work to follow up continuously after publishing Hubs. But if you are in this for the money then you have to accept the fact that it's part of the business. You can't just write Hubs and expect them to bring in money. They need nurturing and tender loving care.

But it's nice to know that our efforts pay off. Isn't it?

See my Table Of Contents of my other support topics for additional help.

Copyright © 2011 Glenn Stok

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