So if you have not already heard, Google released a huge update about 2 months ago called the Panda/Farmer update - and it has had the web-o-sphere in a frenzy. I am reading on so many forums and in the social media world that people are dropping like flies out of Google….and the site owners cannot understand why.

So first, if you have not heard of this update and you have a website, then you MUST start reading more internet related blogs and forums, hint hint. 

So what is the Panda/Farmer update exactly?

Well as always, the algorithm that Google uses is top secret so unless you are friends with the big guys at Google we may never know all of the details of the ranking factors, but here is what we do know.

The Panda update dislikes duplicate content – if you have a site filled with content you “borrowed” from another site, then you could be in trouble.

Say you have a retail website filled with wonderful products! You take the images from the manufacturer you are getting the products from and then you also take their product description and copy and paste that into your site as well. Well imagine that you do that, and then your competitor does that and their competitor does that and so on and son on…you get the point. We are now filled with websites that have the same images and same content for that product. So Google gets a search for this specific product, who do you think will show up first? That is right, the manufacturer. And what they are starting to do is push back the sites that have the same content as the manufacturers site, because it is considered “duplicate” content and that is a no no!

So what the heck am I supposed to do you ask?

Easy, write your OWN content! It is really not that hard – it will not only help you possibly rank HIGHER than the manufacturer site, but may also help you sell more product. Consumers do not want to read about the “specifications” of a product, they want to read a story and read information on how this product will help them in their day to day life.  Yes, this will take a while, but the payoff will be more than worth it.

Another great way to help “personalize” your product pages with content is to add user reviews!

So this is what the Panda is about. Although you may or may not have been hurt by it, the rewriting of your content is an effort worth doing either way!

So here is the latest in the continuing reach to be on page 1 in Google! Speed Matters!

Straight from Google’s world in the ever important Webmaster Tools we get the following:

Google’s goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience. Fast sites increase user satisfaction and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow internet connections), and we hope that as webmasters improve their sites, the overall speed of the web will improve…
It shows you the average page load time for pages in your site, the trend over the last few months, and some suggestions on how to make the pages load faster. Page load time is the total time from the moment the user clicks on a link to your page until the time the entire page is loaded and displayed in a browser.

The last paragraph of that quote refers to the Site Performance tool in the Google Webmaster Tools. If you do not have a Google Webmaster Tools account – I HIGHLY suggest you get one! It has some great information to help you achieve better results for your site in the search engines.

In regards to speed some things that can have an adverse affect are (there are of course more, but these are the basics without getting too techy):

• Slideshows or flash animations – these drain web resources
• Too many CSS files – these are the files that control the look and feel of your site, too many of these files mean more work for the search engines to load them all – consolidation is best!
• Using the write image files! GIF images are for images with a few colors only – logos, text and line art. JPG is good for images with lots of detail and colors like photographs. PNG is a format that is specifically for website use and is for use with transparent and non transparent images. When saving ANY image you must save the image in a web sized version. Images are one of the biggest reason for slow loading pages!
• Your host! If you are hosting with a company like GoDaddy on a basic plan this CAN be affecting your site speed. GoDaddy’s shared hosting means you are sharing a server with thousands of other websites, this can wreak havoc on your site.

Here are a few other tools that can help you evaluate your site speed beside the Google Webmaster Site Performance Tool:

• Page Speed – this is a Firefox Add On
• YSlow – a free tool from Yahoo also a Firefox Add On
• WebPagetest – offers data on site load performance

So how can site speed directly affect you?

1. If your site loads too slow – visitors WILL leave and find a site that loads faster
2. There is a direct relation to the speed of your site and what visitors feel about the overall satisfaction of the site – remember you have about only a couple of seconds to catch their interest, if a site takes more than this to load you have already lost them – forever.
3. Slower sites will start to see themselves slipping in the search engines
4. Faster sites are more easily indexed by Google – improving your search engine placement
5. Many customers really want slideshows and flash on their home pages – we usually discourage this. The home page is your critical point and slideshows and animations drain site speed.

Site speed is not easy for beginners to understand, but it is an important thing you should learn!  It just a small portion of the website owner experience!