How the Panda Update Affected eCommerce

All the "SEO talk" the past few months has been about Google's Panda Update. It was certainly a notable change to Google's algorithm & forever changed the approach webmasters must take to get ranked well in Google. Many websites plummeted & many sites hugely improved their rankings in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

The update, among other things, put a major emphasis on website design, website architecture & textual content. Many webmasters and SEOs are frustrated by the update, but I personally think it was long past due. In my opinion, Google's algorithm was far too focused on backlinks & not focused enough on the quality of websites. With the newly enhanced emphasis on website design & content, the webmaster now controls his or her own fate.

I personally wish Google the best on it's venture to rid the web of low quality websites. There's nothing more frustrating as a legitimate e-commerce store owner than to watch websites with spun content & massive amounts of spam links outranking you! This hugely simplifies your SEO approach, and makes it much easier for you to manage your own campaigns. You can focus more on building quality web pages that are valuable for your visitors, and less time finding ways to build massive amounts of worthless backlinks. Not to "toot my own horn" but this approach is the approach we have ALWAYS taken. It's always worked, but now it should work even better!

Here are a couple of the areas that we know Google put an emphasis on with the Panda Update:

• User Experience - Meaning, what kind of experience a visitor to your website has. This relates to the user-friendliness & architecture of your website. Your website should be simple to navigate, but also have a professional and sleek layout & appearance.
• User-Generated Content (UGC) - Meaning, there should be content on your website that the users generate. For example, customer product reviews, testimonials & FAQ's.

Having all of this to worry about may seem overwhelming, but it's really not. What you actually need to worry about relating to your on-page website content is minimal. You need to do 2 simple things:

1. Use a user-friendly, well designed program to run your website.

2. Fill your pages with good unique content.

You've got #1 covered by simply using Zulu Cart to run your website. We have built Zulu Cart to be 100% SEO-friendly. The architecture is extremely user-friendly & it makes user-generated content simple to get through the product-specific FAQ system and the customer reviews capability.

So the only thing left up to you is #2 - unique & relevant content. It may sound complex, but it's really not. Simply write the textual content on your e-commerce store's web pages yourself (rather than copying it from somewhere else on the web & just pasting it on your web pages). Then later on, when you've gotten to know your micro niche a little better, write some good articles and post them in your articles section within Zulu. That's all there is to it! The 'Get Your Store Ranked' chapter will go into a bit more detail and walk you through the entire process of building your Zulu Cart store the right way!

So I say rejoice the Panda Update! Google has made it that much easier for us legitimate micro niche ecommerce store owners to get ranked for our targeted keyword phrase(s).

To start using our state-of-the-art shopping cart platform Zulu Cart for your web store, visit this page.

The Panda update is WONDERFUL for micro-niche ecommerce stores like ours! The beauty of a micro-niche store is that we're targeting lower-volume, less competitive keyword phrases. We're not going after monster phrases that are extremely competitive. We're not trying to compete for broad, general keyword phrases. We're trying to become KING of a little micro niche... a keyword phrase that is targeted & has a high intent to buy. The Panda update makes it more possible than ever to succeed in that quest. It puts us more in the driver's seat & makes us less reliant upon getting hundreds upon hundreds of  backlinks from other sites. The Panda update puts more emphasis on the content of the website, which we have complete control of! From what we've seen so far since the Panda update, with a good aged domain name and fresh, unique hand-written content, you can now get your site ranked well faster than ever with a lot fewer backlinks than we've seen the last couple of years. Before Panda, a well-constructed keyword-driven website could only get you about half the way there; since Panda, you could say that a well-constructed keyword-driven website can get you most of the way there!

Yep, in the new Google environment, having a lot of fresh, unique content on your pages (especially your home page) along with a handful of useful, unique articles is more important than ever. We've been preaching it forever, and we're happy to see that the Google algorithm has gone this direction. We love the fact that Panda puts your fate more in your own hands (instead of so much emphasis being on external backlinks).

Are you saying we should rotate in "fresh, unique content" on our homepage? My homepage text content has ALWAYS been the same. I have no problem changing it if that's what is recommended.

Yeah, that "fresh" word was especially concerning relating to the home page. I was beginning to think I would need to insert some java script to automatically insert a quote of the day or something. 

I have both on my websites and was always a little confused by this, too, I must admit. Kevin told me something that makes complete sense, though.

You should have at least five solid, keyword enriched articles that are instructional or informative in the articles section of your website. These articles would be more professional than what would be in a blog.

Your website's blog would be more for anecdotal stories, things you found interesting or simply general, random thoughts you may want to share with your blog readers. A blog is an excellent place to post new additions to your catalog, a funny story you heard about someone using your product or about upcoming trends in the industry.

Both are important parts of your website's overall SEO strategy.

This is all very interesting to read, and I also am one of those people who found advertising parking pages begin to sneak up and almost over take me. Worthless pages. Ahh going to have to double check today if they are still up there.
I don't know if it is effective, but I actually change my home page about 1 time per 2-3 months. I put up a new picture and new words. Many stay the same, but like right now I mention that it is important to order instock due to the time of the season it is. This reminds me though to add a good key word in what I am writing. Internally, and due to stock and instock or sales, the website changes weekly. Is this also good? New items for sale, old taken off, and others put on "sale"?
Bobbie

That sound reasonable especially if you have your pictures named with alt key words. I'm not using Zulu cart (Keep in mind my store has been up since 2005 so it was before I knew about Store Coach).

New question. How MUCH new article content, etc do you need to stay competitive with others ranking in Google? I have more than ten unique articles I will be posting with fresh meta tags and meta titles, but is there any way to MEASURE the effect these articles will have?

I want to see if new content is as effective or more effective than relevant backlinks(although I can see how they are both contributors to getting to page 1, or "just close enough").

Or as Dave (or was it Kevin?) has said before, if your website has the same exact information as other websites that are already ranking well, Google, in essence, says "so what?" If you don't create something a little bit different, why pay attention to your website at all? It'd be like the newspaper always having the same exact stories every day. Eventually, you'd just stop buying the paper. Give Google some new news to buy!

The ALT tag for your store logo is your store name. So I'm not real sure what it's talking about.

Steve, I'm guessing this error isn't an error at all. Some images shouldn't have alt tags. For example, graphics that make up the template should not have alt tags. On the homepage, the logo and all product images have alt tags. If there are any images showing up that should have alt tags & don't, they are probably images that are in a custom homepage gadget. You can go into that homepage gadget and add alt tags yourself & check again.

The URL is totally controllable by you. I would also suggest that they "may" not know exactly what they are talking about in that regard. The recent train of thought is that the further up in your URL the keywords are, the better (which is why doghouses.com is better than ourdoghouses.com). Obviously if they are at the end of a truncated URL it is not ideal. It's not like a page isn't going to rank without the keywords in the URL, though.

Cool,

Cheers guys. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page and thanks for your comment on the other topic Scooter. Hopefully better changes will be happening in the next few days.