Google Panda Recovery Tips: Guide to Recovering from Panda Penalty

Are you looking for a detailed guide on Google Panda recovery?

Have you noticed any traffic drop on your websites? It might be because you’re hit by an algorithm update from Google such as Panda. If you’re not taking any precautions while creating content, website traffic keeps on dropping. In this detailed guide, I’ll share a few amazing Google Panda recovery tips.

What’s Google Panda update?

Google Panda is an important update from Google that is aimed at penalizing the sites with thin content. And it’s also a blessing for sites that have high-quality content.

Panda update was first released in 2011, it was introduced to strike out all the low-quality sites with poor content from the search results.

In a nutshell, the Panda update will penalize the sites with low-quality content and rewards the sites with high-quality content.

There are many websites that have been demolished after the recent Google Panda update 4.0. If you are one among them, this detailed guide is for you to recover from the Google panda penalty.

Before going into the details, first, know which Google update affected your website traffic. Here’s an interesting illustration of both panda and penguin updates.

Google panda vs penguin

The best way to find it out is to check the Google update dates. You can check them here, this is a detailed guide written by Moz blog.

Also, do a simple SEO audit on your sites by going into your Google Webmaster Tools >> Search Appearance >> HTML improvements, and you will see if there are any duplicate titles and meta descriptions present on your websites.

Prefer watching a video? Check it out from here.

How to recover from Google Panda Updates

google panda recovery

If you are hit by Google Panda, it’s not the end of the world. You can still get back your search rankings (in fact, you can improve your search traffic) if you implement a few strategies on your blogs or websites.

If you search online for Panda recovery tips, you will come up with thousands of articles. But let me tell you one thing, most of these posts add no real value to the readers who really want to get back their site traffic after the Google panda update.

Thatโ€™s the reason why I have carefully researched and shared the tips for recovering from the Google panda penalty. Letโ€™s jump into the details.


1. Fix similar content issues

Quality wins over quantity. So instead of churning out 1000 blog posts that are of no absolute use, itโ€™s better to create 100 blog posts that are of high quality, highly in-depth, and informative.

Googleโ€™s John Mueller had this to say about the update and its connection to the quality of your content.

โ€œThereโ€™s no minimum length, and thereโ€™s no minimum number of articles a day that you have to post, nor even a minimum number of pages on a website. In most cases, quality is better than quantity. We give top priority to content thatโ€™s of high quality, unique, and compelling to users. Donโ€™t fill your site with low-quality content, instead work on creating epic content that servers people, not search engines.โ€

So what can you understand from the above statement?

If youโ€™ve content quality-related issues, fix them as soon as possible to avoid Google penalties.

Having too many topics around the same topic can lead to a Google panda penalty.

If your website lacks focus and covers multiple blog posts under the same topic, you might face penalty issues from Google Panda, so make sure to focus on providing a one-stop guide, rather than focusing on creating multiple posts around the same topic.

Hereโ€™s what we do at Bloggers Passion to fix similar content issues

We club together all the similar content-type posts. For example, there are 3 to 4 blog posts that have been published on our blog that talk about the same topic โ€œbuilding a profitable blogโ€ so we decided to club all the similar posts to make one MEGA post by targeting all the relevant keywords for those topics.

Here are what the content looks like (after clubbing).

posts clubbing

As you can see the post became so massive and has all the information that one needs to know about building a profitable blog in 2024 and beyond.

That way weโ€™re helping people to find A to Z information around one topic and weโ€™re also fixing similar content issues to prevent our site from getting penalized by any kind of algorithms which include Panda.

So you too can follow the same approach where youโ€™ll have to find all the similar blog posts or pages that are published on your blog and try to club them all and make it a single post (which is often very detailed) and focus on adding few relevant keywords to get more search benefits.


2. Fix poor grammar issues

Make sure your content has no grammatical mistakes, typos, errors, and so on because Google Panda algorithms also focus on your content quality (which includes how error-free your content is).

The best way to fix poor grammar issues on your site is to use grammar checker tools like Grammarly. Grammarly is one of the most used and best grammar checker tools available on the Internet right now.

It comes with both free and premium plans where the free plan (offers you a browser extension to find and correct your grammar issues on the go) whereas the premium version gives you sophisticated features like plagiarism checking and having more than 200+ different grammar corrections and identification algorithms to fix poor grammar issues on your site.

Here are some of the things to check while using any grammar checker tools;

  • Spelling mistakes and incorrectly used words
  • Improperly used punctuation; correct use of semicolons, commas, colons, apostrophes, and other marks
  • Grammar correcting issues such as dangling modifiers, fragments, etc
  • Find any issues with possible plagiarism

That being said, you can visit Grammarly from here, create a free account with them and grab their free chrome extension to improve your writing quickly on the go.

Grammarly review

3. Increase your websiteโ€™s dwell time, reduce bounce rates

Dwell time on the website is the amount of time spent reading a specific site content, on average.

Dwell time plays a key role in Panda recovery since time spent on a page is closely related to user experience with a website, you can sure dwell time is somehow involved in improving your overall website search engine rankings.

Dwell time basically gives you an idea about “Are visitors actually reading my content?โ€

Both dwell time and your website bounce rates go hand in hand. That means, if your dwell time is high (the average time spent on your site by your visitors), your bounce rate will be low because people will also be looking for more information by clicking relevant pages on your site.

Here are a few things you can do to improve dwell time and decrease bounce rates quickly.

  • Use internal linking smartly by linking to highly relevant content within your blog posts. As a rule of thumb, use at least 4 to 5 links within a 2000-word blog post to increase dwell time and reduce bounce rates. Also, show related posts in your sidebar (as weโ€™re showing now) or at the end of your blog posts which also helps.
  • Create detailed content. We usually write 2000+ word blog posts and we often notice that the users spend most of their time while they are reading a long piece of content.
  • Make your content easy to digest. Most people donโ€™t spend much time reading a long and boring paragraph. So make sure to divide your paragraphs into 2 to 3 lines and also use bullet points, and subheadings.

Here are a few changes you can make on your site to instantly recover from Google Panda updates in the future:

  • Understand the niche or industry which you are in (so you can create highly relevant content that’s useful for your target audience)
  • Understand the targeted market and targeted audience (and know their wants and needs)
  • Mainly create content for your website’s targeted audience, not for search engines
  • Make sure your UI and UX must be easy to use, engaging and fast enough to load
  • Stop focusing on keyword density or keyword stuffing such as repeating keywords and focus primarily on creating content for people
  • Give extra thought to optimizing your title and meta description for your audience and also focus on including your primary keyword

Bonus Read: What Is the Future of SEO? Take a look at the futuristic post on SEO.


4. Increase click through rates from search

The #1 way to increase your overall website ranks is to improve your overall click-through rates. The best way to Panda recovery is to improve your content SEO optimization.

That being said, a generic title tag, and poor meta description can literally affect your website from getting more clicks from search engines like Google.

So make sure to improve your click-through rates from search.

Hereโ€™s how you can do it.

Install WordPress SEO by Yoast: Itโ€™s the #1 optimization plugin that helps you optimize your titles, and meta description and helps you focus on optimizing your content for one primary keyword.

Here’s what it looks like;

yoast dashboard

Also make sure to write excellent, unique, and click-worthy headlines so you can improve overall clicks on your blog posts from search engines. Make sure to also put the main keyword within your title tag for better optimization. Donโ€™t overdo it though by focusing on using two keywords within your title.

Also, learn from your competitors. Whether you know it or not, if you get more clicks, even if youโ€™re ranking at 5th position on Google, you can quickly jump to the first result by attracting more clicks from search users.

So before writing on a topic, make sure to go through the top 10 search results to see how the headlines are crafted. Find out whether they are using how-toโ€™s, list posts or guides, or videos to get into the top 10 results so you can implement the same headline tactics to improve your overall click-through rates.


5. Fix bad content on your websites

One of the major reasons your site is affected by panda updates is because you have thin content which is usually known as bad content.

These thin contents often get slashed by Google search engine crawlers, because they only want to show better content to their users to give the best user experience. If you really want to get better search results, then you need to first sue your bad content.

Remember, Panda knows which is quality content and which is not.

How to find bad content on your sites?

One of the easiest ways to find and fix your bad content is to use your Google analytics. Know your traffic metrics for all the blog posts that you have published on your sites. The blog posts that have less SEO traffic are often the bad posts (in terms of Google eyes).

So here are a few ways to fix the bad content to recover from panda updates quickly.

  • Use unique headlines: Most people Google random post ideas and come up almost with the same headlines and use them on their blogs to get better search results. Google updates slap you if you donโ€™t have unique headlines for your blog posts or pages. Always make sure to have magnetic and unique headlines, and make sure to Google whether there are any headlines available that you want to cover.
  • Delete or update your bad blog posts: I know, we all have some blog posts that donโ€™t add any value to either search engines or readers. If you know any of them, try fixing them immediately. As Google Panda updates its algorithms every now and then, you will get better rankings for the posts or pages that you make some improvements by adding more quality or deleting the bad posts from your sites.
  • Give your old posts an SEO boost by interlinking: Interlinking your blog posts can be crucial in getting better search results. I would strongly advise you not to use any automation interlinking plugins or tools to link. They often almost link to the same posts, so make sure to manually add the posts and maintain relevancy.
  • Fix your broken links: Broken links have nothing to do with Google Panda updates (Google Penguin updates are more concerned about bad links), but if you want to get a fast recovery from Google panda updates, then find and fix all your broken or dead links on your websites. Because the links you add to your posts or pages definitely matter in terms of measuring the quality of the content. So focus on removing the bad links that are affecting your overall content. You can use the plugins like Broken link checker to find and fix your broken links on WordPress sites.

5. Create โ€œhigh quality contentโ€

If you are searching for proven ways to recover from Google Panda updates, make sure to focus on creating top-notch content. Google always rewards the sites with high-quality content. Here’s what top quality content means;

Content that is flawless: If you have blog posts or pages with grammatical mistakes or typos, your sites get affected by Google panda updates. The only solution to recover is to write flawless content or hire someone who writes better content for you to grow your organic traffic.

Always make sure to double-check your posts for any mistakes before hitting publish button. Google doesnโ€™t want to show or give top search results to the content that is full of typos. At least hire an editor if you are not good at publishing flawless content to make sure you are not being hit by Google panda updates. Also, focus on creating long-form of content because it works best.

long content ranks well

Content that is meant for readers, not search engines: If you are not writing relevant content for your sites, Google panda updates will slap you. So itโ€™s always better to focus on specific keywords than confusing Google crawlers about the relevancy of your content.

For example, if you use the word Apple, there are so many changes that Google might consider that either as a fruit, brand, or any name. If you donโ€™t confuse Google by using the Apple word and filling your copy with a fruit name, brand, or any name, you will definitely get penalized as Google canโ€™t understand what you are really thinking to rank for. So focus on your targeted keywords and supplement them with relevant keywords to get better search rankings and never ever use irrelevant keywords.

Content that is original: Create content that is not shared anywhere else. Google updates like Panda and Penguin are giving more priority to the content-filled sites that are uniquely written. If you are the one who is thinking to copy others’ headlines, descriptions, sub-heads or copies of the contents, you will definitely get penalized by Google Panda updates. And itโ€™s hard to recover unless you remove these copied contents or start producing really original content.

Stop too much indication of your posts: While itโ€™s good to have your content indicated on different platforms to get more traffic, itโ€™s advisable if you stop indicating your content on too many platforms. Make sure to syndicate your content on only those sites where you are most active, where you share your opinions with others and help others to grow their businesses.

Make sure your content is highly relevant: There’s only one effective way to recover from Google Panda updates and that is to write highly relevant topics on your blog. It’s not about posting anything under the sun on your blog to increase your website search traffic. Only publish contents that are highly relevant to your blog’s topic. If you are a beginner, instead of focusing on too many areas, focus on 2 to 3 topic ideas that are relevant to your blog audience. That way you will get more time to address the right people.


7. Go social, diversify your traffic sources

Social sharing is the key. Whether you agree with it or not, Google updates give top priority to the social shares on your posts or pages. If your content gets a lot of shares and comments, surely you will deserve better search rankings on Google.

So how to get more social shares on your blog posts to recover from Google updates like Panda and Penguin?

Here are a few simple tips you can use.

  • Use a social sharing button plugin and display it at the top or left side of your blog posts.
  • Use attractive images on your blog posts. Images often attract more people to share your blog posts. They especially go really viral on sites like Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.
  • Also, time your blog posts. Share them on social media sites at peak times. Find out when your readers or fans will be available online and promote your blog posts on the social media sites accordingly.
  • Ask your readers or followers to share your posts on their social media accounts. Just by asking them, you can dramatically increase your social shares. If they really find your posts relevant and useful, they will definitely spread the word for you.
  • Write compelling headlines on your blog posts or web pages to attract more social shares. The audience on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter mostly lookup for headlines, if they are really persuading, they will instantly click on your posts and they will share them with others if they find your posts useful. So make sure to write attention-grabbing headlines to recover from Google Panda updates.
  • Post your links on social media sites at the right times to reach out to maximum people. Also, start using others’ names while sharing stuff on social media. Make sure to include influential bloggers in your social sharing links if you mention them in your blog posts.

One more important thing to remember is to diversify your traffic sources. Why depend solely on Google to get traffic to your websites or blogs? Focus your time and energy also on the sites like social media and leverage your blog traffic using email lists etc. This way you wonโ€™t get much affected even when Google introduces new animal updates to drop your search engine rankings.


8. Use LSI keywords over short tail keywords

One of the top ways to recover from Google Panda penalties is to use LSI keywords, they give huge value to your blog posts.

Latent semantic indexing keywords (or LSI keywords) are simply known as related keywords or synonyms.

For example, if you are writing about WordPress SEO plugins, you can also use the relevant (LSI) keywords like Best SEO plugins for WordPress, SEO WP plugins, etc. on your blog posts to rank well in Google search results.

How do using LSI keywords help recover from Google panda updates?

You are not using the same keywords again and again when using LSI keywords. It means you are not over-optimizing your blog posts just to get better search results for your desired keywords. You are focusing more on giving a better user experience by writing and including relevant and LSI keywords on your blog posts or pages.

This will be definitely seen as a positive sign by Google and helps you increase your search traffic for the keywords you are targeting for. Here’s what the LSI keywords look like (for example keyword: “fitness tips for men”)

fitness example lsi

How to find LSI keywords?

The best way of finding LSI keywords is to use the Google auto-suggestion tool. For example, when you type for SEO tips on Google, it will also show you synonyms for the same keywords at the end of the results.

You can use them as well on your blog posts to tell Google properly that you are writing really relevant content for the keywords you are ranking for on search engines.

How many % keywords should you use?

Thereโ€™s no thumb rule actually. Itโ€™s better if you donโ€™t go beyond 3% of keyword density for any keywords you are targeting for. Less than 1% keyword density is also not good as it may not give you any great results from the search engines.

So, itโ€™s advisable to use the keyword density between 1 to 3% but make sure to use LSI keywords also along with your focused keywords. This way you will be able to rank well for several keywords from one piece of content.


9. Excessive ads can kill your SEO

Perform heatmap analysis with Ptengine to figure out what’s performing better and what isn’t. Likewise, you would be able to eliminate the bad ones and keep the ones performing best.

Did you know that the ads you use on your blogs will have a huge impact on your search engine rankings?

It’s true that too many ads above the fold are too bad for your SEO. So make sure your site layout is focused on giving a better experience to your readers, not advertisers.

Google may penalize your site for having too many advertisements on your blogs or websites. Use the above-the-fold area to give maximum visibility to your content, not ads.

Here’s what Google said on its Inside Search blog:

Weโ€™ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and itโ€™s difficult to find the actual content, they arenโ€™t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.

So sites that donโ€™t have much content โ€œabove-the-foldโ€ can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesnโ€™t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the siteโ€™s initial screen real estate to ads, thatโ€™s not a very good user experience.

Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

If your site is hit by Panda updates, remove your ads that are above the fold and recrawl your site with fewer ads. This will help you easily recover from upcoming Panda updates.


10. No more content farms

Google also started taking serious actions against content farms that were gaining top rankings with thin quality content.

Basically, content farms mean, that few companies hire a large number of freelance writers to start generating a lot of textual content to satisfy algorithms. This is done just to increase their search engine rankings. Usually, these types of content are posted only by using keyword stuffing or rehashing the content.

According to many reports, the new change on Google Panda against penalizing these content farms impacted over 12% of US results. That’s a lot, right?

So if you are using these content farms, stop using it right away to avoid penalties from Google Panda updates.


11. Noindex your tags and categories

There are a few pages that are not required to show on Google search results if you donโ€™t want to get hit by any Google update like Penguin or Panda. These pages include your tags, category pages, image attachment pages, etc.

The important thing here to remember is to only show those pages on Google that are of highest quality. Mostly tags and category pages donโ€™t have any quality as they only show your excerpts or just tags, they donโ€™t add any value to your search results. So itโ€™s always better to noindex these tags and categories pages from WordPress to keep your blog safe from Google updates.

And also noindex unwanted pages like your newsletter subscription, download content or poor content pages from Google to make sure your site is full of great content pages.

Once open your Pages in WordPress (from the dashboard), check all the published pages you have. Find out that ones that donโ€™t add any value to the search engines, and then noindex one by one.

How can you noindex unwanted pages from WordPress?

One of the easiest ways to remove unwanted pages from Google search results is to use an awesome plugin called WordPress meta robots that makes your categories, tags, and archive noindex. And all the search results within your site, 404 and others to noindex, nofollow.

This is by far the most useful plugin to help you noindex unwanted links from Google search results.

So that’s it from my end. I hope the strategies mentioned in this guide will help you recover from all the Google Panda updates. Make sure to work on all of them to get back your search rankings in the coming updates from Google Panda.

Panda 4.2  โ€”  July 17, 2015

This was the last “confirmed” Google Panda update according to Moz. You can see all the recent Google algorithm changes from here.

Google announced a Panda update (most likely a data refresh), saying that it could take months to fully roll out. The immediate impact was unclear, and there were no clear signs of a major algorithm update which affected few search engine results.

Google Panda 4.1 update

As of now, Google Panda 4.1 update is still rolling in (from a week) and most gaming and lyrics-related websites have been affected by this update. This update was first announced by Pierre Far on his Google plus profile on 26th September 2014. Many search engine-related websites suggest Google Panda 4.1 awarded the sites that create news, content, and download portals. And Google Panda 4.1 updated caused the damage to the sites that are related to games, lyrics, and medical content.

Google Panda updates are frequently rolled out because of one major reason: to remove thin content from search results and give a better experience to Google users. If you’re not focusing on creating helpful content or just rehashing others’ content, you are not going to survive from Google Panda updates.

If you’re gaming, lyrics, or medical-related niche and hit by Google Panda 4.1 update, just make sure to follow the advice mentioned in this guide and you will be able to recover in the next Google Panda update.

Google Panda 4.0 update

Google released Panda update 4.0 on 21st May 2014. There are many sites that lose their organic traffic by up to 60%. Even the giant eCommerce sites like eBay lost approx. 80% of their organic traffic after recent Panda update.

Google Panda 4.0 update has affected 7% of queries. Previously whenever Google panda updates were rolling in, they used to affect 1 to 2% of search results. It means this time almost 7% (thatโ€™s a whopping number!) have been removed from search results just in the name of thin or poor content. This is the reason why many sites lost their organic traffic immensely, and few sites with quality content have increased their search traffic dramatically.


FAQs

Here are some of the most important questions you must know if youโ€™re looking for Google panda recovery in 2024 and beyond.

What are the best tips for overcoming a Panda penalty?

You can either update such thin contents or use the 301 redirects plugin to safely redirect them to a few of your amazing posts. Then, keep on adding fresh and highly useful content for your audience. Thatโ€™s the only way for the Google Panda recovery.

What is the difference between Googleโ€™s Panda and Penguin updates?

Panda measures the โ€œquality of your contentโ€ of your website. If your content is highly informative and useful to your audience, youโ€™ll get better rankings. If your website has thin content which is too generic, youโ€™ll get penalized.

Penguin measures the โ€œquality of your backlinksโ€. If your website links are spammy or coming from poor low quality domains (or buying links from Fiverr), your site might be penalized.

What black hat SEO techniques are penalized specifically by Google Panda?

Here are some of theย black hat SEO techniquesย which you should avoid if you want to prevent getting your sites penalized by Google Panda updates.

โ†’ Duplicate content
โ†’ Content farms
โ†’ Keyword stuffing
โ†’ Over usage of H1 tags (you should use H1 tag only once in your posts or pages)
โ†’ Over-optimization
โ†’ Having a too descriptive title or meta description tags
โ†’ Scraped content
โ†’ Hidden content, link cloaking, and so on

How can I save my site from the Penguin update?

To save your site from Penguin updates, you need to focus on removing all the toxic and bad links from your site. The best tool for that is to use Semrush and perform a site audit to find out if you have any toxic links. Then, you need to connect your Semrush account with Googleโ€™s Disavow tool to upload all toxic links and get rid of them all at once.

How to know if my website is penalized by Google Panda update?

To check if your site isย hit by any Google algorithms, you can log on to the webmaster tools and choose โ€œManual Actionsโ€ in the โ€œSearch Trafficโ€ so youโ€™ll know how your website traffic is. If you see a huge traffic drop in your search rankings, your site is hit by Google updates such as Panda or Penguin.

Here’s the video on how to remove bad/toxic links with Semrush.

Browse more SEO Tutorials:


Final Thoughts

Recovering from Google Panda updates is not a big deal if you focus on giving top-notch quality to your readers. Focus on your readers and Google Panda will take care of your search traffic.

Google Panda updates are mainly targeted at penalizing the sites with thin content and giving the best and high-quality sites to the users from the search results. So focus on implementing the tips mentioned in this detailed guide on Google Panda recovery, youโ€™ll see the best results.

Let me know what you think? Have you been hit by Google panda? If yes, what did you do to recover from Panda updates? Please share your thoughts below.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (35)

  1. Hi Anil,

    Thanks for sharing this article. I am new to blogging and searching various things on website traffic increasing on web, and I got some useful information with your article and got some idea that how to not get penalize by google and its recovery.

    Thanks for your effort on this article and also for sharing this. keep posting such a good informative content as this will useful for most the bloggers who are starters. very appreciable work by you!

    Ruven

    Reply
  2. Being a newbie, understanding these algorithm’s like Panda penguin is difficult for me, but I am trying hard to get it.

    What I have understand so far about Panda is, that I need to write good articles to get ranked, but I have question regarding this, Can I rewrite articles? Because finding unique ideas and writing full unique is difficult for me as it takes hours of time, so Can I get a reference and rewrite someone’s else articles?

    Will it be ok?

    Regards,
    Jasvinder

    Reply
    • useful information with your article and got some idea that how to not get penalize by google and its recovery.

      Thanks for your effort on this article and also for sharing this. keep posting such a good informative content as this will useful for most the bloggers who are starters. very appreciable work

      Reply
      • One of the best ways to avoid Google penalties is to create unique content, make sure to research write keywords and include compelling headlines in your articles. Just make sure to check your backlink profile as well as regularly as possible and try to remove toxic links from your site and you’ll be way ahead of your competitors.

        Reply
  3. thanks anil agrawal for awesome tips. it also helps to improve website. as new blogger i makes many mistakes on my blog but this tips helps to improve my blog

    Reply
  4. Thanks Anil for sharing your experiences. I think people who are starting a blog now are most benefited as they can collect all information which is actually wrong for a blog and then accordingly start working on a slow but steady manner.

    Reply
  5. Thanks Anil for such a nice guide to recover from panda penalty , I have not been yet penalized but will take care in future keeping in mind these points…

    Reply
  6. What I have noticed Google Panda just hate the low quality content, sites or blog which are posting low quality contents are coming down

    Reply
  7. Hi Anil,

    Thanks for sharing such a great piece of information on recovering a blog from Panda.

    You said to use sharebar plugin in your post but I am curious to know what plugin you use on your blog. Actually it looks far more different than the one you shared in this article.

    Regards,
    Akshay Joshi.

    Reply
  8. Hey Anul, Good points. I think Good ranks is only for who deserve it. Bloggers spends hours to create a blog post, while some a-hole play games to overtake them. I got 300% increase in my search traffic after this update. So I welcome such a huge positive approach of Google. By the way thanks nice update, looking forward to hear from you.

    Reply
  9. My site was hit by the Panda 4.1 update in September, and since then, the traffic has been going down and down. I have already deleted tons of low quality content and also edited some posts with proper on page optimization. So, my question is, do I need to submit a reconsideration application for the Panda update, or I will notice the results in the next Panda update?

    Reply
  10. Hi Anil,

    Thanks for posting the article about the Panda recovery, one of my niche site got slightly affected in traffic from end of sept14, i was bit confused. But later came to know the reason. I already started working to make it restore the traffic again.

    Thanks for this wonderful article.

    Dev

    Reply
  11. Awesome Post Anil,

    There is not that much guide about Panda recovery because all those SEO are more scare from Penguin, that’s why you can find number of Penguin Recovery tips.
    But your Panda guide is awesome and I think it cover almost everything.
    Thanks again, bookmarking this page for future reference

    Reply
  12. Hi Anil.
    Great post you have written.
    Is it really possible to recover from a Panda update?
    How long would the recovery process take?
    Thanks again for sharing.
    Regards
    Marcel

    Reply
    • No doubt one can recover from Google panda penalty. And if you have fixed all problem area’s on your website that are mentioned in post, you should be able to recover in the next Google panda update. I was able to recover in Google panda 4.0 version. Marcel please let me know in case you need any help in this regard.

      Reply
  13. “It is the best practice to be safe from any Googleโ€™s weird animal ๐Ÿ˜› ”
    hahaha can’s stop laughting best comment ๐Ÿ˜€ ๐Ÿ˜€

    Reply
  14. Congratulation Anil,
    you beat panda and make more benefits from others mistakes who trapped into panda updates.

    i’m going to follow your all tips on my blog.
    thanks for post.

    Best of luck for further days.

    Reply
  15. There are some technicalities that you mentioned very beautifully and that’s what actually made me keep reading. Panda doesn’t look as dreadful after reading this… ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
  16. Very informative article Bro! You discussed each and every point.Now I dont need to panic more about google search algorithms..!

    Reply
  17. You also can check a good bit and see many things in the Google webmaster section. Given you can and have verified you own your website, you can keep a good eye on website statistics.

    Reply
  18. I am still trying to get the Google penalties removed from some of my blogs and they are all because of the same thing – unnatural outbound links – I wasn’t paying as close attention to the links guest posters were leaving as I should have been. I also didn’t realise that Google penalises nofollow links as well (I’ve been using nofollow on my blogs for years). :/

    I am goin to stop accepting guest posts because people can’t be trusted.

    Reply
    • Hi Dean

      I was able to remove the outbound link penalty on my blog within a week time after receiving the warning about the same in my Google webmaster tools account.

      I hope my experience could help you. Thus let’s connect sometime.

      Here are few things that I did instantly and then submitted a reconsideration request successfully.

      – Made all external links as no follow as the first action with the help of a plugin
      – Then start cleaning up links from the guest posts.
      – I have doubt like whether we should guest posts on our blog. But to be extra cautious, I stopped accepting guest posts on my blog.
      – Removed all paid links

      Reply
  19. Traffic to my blog site didn’t drop off after 21st May. But something seems to have happened over last one week – that is after 11th June. Any idea what it could be? A Penguin update perhaps?

    Reply
    • Hi

      Google rolled out the third version of payday loan algorithm on 12th June targeting spammy queries like payday loan, gambling and casino etc. Try to find out if your website has anything to do with this update.

      Reply
  20. Hi Anil,

    You’ve come with a beneficial post for bloggers. I do agree with your points related to Google Panda animal. Surely, it will hit the blog with thin content and broken links. I’m taking care of both but the saddest thing is that my traffic has dropped a bit after this update.

    I’ve tried to find a solution for this, but I can’t! So decided to edit my contents with good KW density as you told. A senior blogger suggested me to make “nofollow” to tags and categories, yet to do that. I know that am doing simple mistakes like these and thus got hit by that big Google animal.

    Thanks for your detailed guide to get recover from Google Panda Penalty, will follow all your tips and keep my traffic on track.

    Reply
    • Surely you should nofolllow, noindex all unnecessary pages on your blog. Only nofollow will not help you. You should do it on priority basis and in case you need any help please let me know. Here are few content types you can think of adding noindex and nofollow tags:

      – tags
      – categories
      – author pages
      – archives

      Reply
      • Thanks for replying with care Anil ๐Ÿ™‚

        I happy to say that my organic traffic got increased a bit after the panda update. I’ve nofollowed tags, categories and archives as you told with the help of SEO by Yoast plugin.

        Reply
        • I have one more valuable tip to share with you:

          – You should spend some time on your old blog posts. You should either update them with fresh content and if you feel those contents are useless, you should remove them. I took the similar kind of action on my blog posts here on BloggersPassion.com

          Reply
  21. Hello Anil,

    Thanks for a awesome guide to recover from a Google Panda penalty.

    Low quality content is the sworn enemy of blog because Google Panda hates low quality blogs.

    We should create linkable content to get some high quality links.

    Looking forward to read your future posts.

    Thanks
    Gagan Masoun

    Reply
    • Thanks true Gagan. Google Panda is all about low quality contents. If we have thin quality contents on our blog, Google Panda updates are going to harm us. But the good thing is that when we get rid of these thin contents, we have the chance of getting back our traffic as Panda updates keep on happening from time to time.

      Reply
  22. Hi Anil,

    Thanks for your great guide on recovering blog from Panda Penalty.

    I always prefer to keep checking my old posts to update them for better info. I know how low quality or thin content can invite Panda to slap your blog.

    I prefer linking to authority sites to gain some trust of search engines. It is the best practice to be safe from any Google’s weird animal ๐Ÿ˜›

    Adding quality content, passing link juice to internal links and varying traffic sources is surely a great tip bro.

    One more thing I can add here is your anchor text to internal links. I don’t prefer to use keyword rich anchor texts even for my internal links. It not only keep link building safe but also increase CTR of my inner pages and reduce my blog’s bounce rate too.

    Thanks for the great tips, bro!
    Best Regards!
    Ankit

    Reply
    • Thanks for sharing value adding comment Ankit. Surely we should be very cautious when building backlinks for your blog whether they are internal or external. We should avoid using keyword based anchors most of time.

      Reply
      • Hi Anil,

        It’s my pleasure that you found my comment useful.
        Anchor texts must be meaningful, but not exact keyword rich or misleading.

        I noticed that co-citations works great to boost value of any internal link.
        Like: 5 Secrets To Increase Blog Authority. Check them here.

        What do you think about this strategy, Anil?
        Share your views..
        ~Ankit

        Reply

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