It’s the first 5 day week of 2012, so we thought we should start it by giving you three simple tips to help combat the beast – Google’s Panda updates. Google announced last month via Twitter that Panda updates will continue in 2012. There have currently been six updates to Panda since Google first introduced it in February 2011. With the next update anticipated sometime this month you should paying attention to the following three areas when performing maintenance on your website to help ensure that its rankings aren’t adversely affected.

Keyword Density
Panda has been coming down heavy on duplicate content (content that is not unique), poorly constructed language, and which have a high keyword density level in an to penalise sites that use too many keywords to try to increase their site rankings. Although there is no globally accepted keyword density percentage, we advise keeping it at between 5% and 8% in order to avoid being considered spam by Google or your visitors. The most important thing to remember however, is that nothing beats creating original, unique and quality content as often as possible.

Relevancy of Keywords
Using keywords which are often used by spamy sites may have a detrimental to your site. Before targeting a new keyword try Googling it and look at the quality of websites that are ranking on the first page. Are these reputable companies in your niche? Do they carry stupendous amount of content that looks spamy (are they a content farm)? These are just some of the questions you should be asking when evaluating these results.

Fix Broken Links
Finally, we recommend checking all links and making sure that the URLs they are pointing to still exist. If you find links that are no longer working, update them with the correct URL or remove them if the page cannot be found anywhere. Carrying broken links on your site can give Google the impression that you are just a link farm or that your content is outdated – both of which will negatively affect your rank.
Extra Tip: If you are using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, then have a look for plugins that automatically scan your site for broken links and alert you when any are found. For WordPress, we recommend using Broken Link Checker.

Related Posts:

1. How to Dodge Past the Panda
2. Google Panda 2.5 Update
3. Google now indexing Flash
4. Duplicate Content Warnings by Google