1. Beyond Pandas and Penguins:
Tac$cs for SEO That Won’t Get You in
Trouble
Joel Swaney & Peter Quale

2. Introduc9ons
Joel Swaney Peter Quale
Senior Search Manager VP of Technical Search
Marke9ng
Pandas & Penguins

3. Agenda
• What do search engines ask of us?
• What used to work and what not to do?
• What is working today?
• What does the future hold?
• Google & You – Where can you Learn More?
• Q&A
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4. The Internet is a big messy place
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5. Search Engines are trying to
catalog it.
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6. They are asking SEO people to
help.
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7. So basically… we are dorky
librarians.
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8. What do Google & Bing Ask of
us?
Total Sites Across All Domains
August 1995 ‐ May 2012
*Netcra@ Domain Survey
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9. Google Webmaster Guidelines
hUp://bit.ly/webmasterguidelines
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10. Bing Webmaster Help
hUp://bit.ly/bingwebmasterhelp
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11. Panda Penguin
Update Update
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12. Panda & Penguin
• Both designed to fight webspam and reward quality
content.
• Panda – Feb 24th 2011 – Penalized:
– Ar9cle sites and content aggregators like About.com
– Duplicate content
– Un‐linked pages
• Penguin – April 24th 2012 – Affected 3.1 of English
queries, and penalized:
– Sites with large numbers of unnatural links.
– Web pages with liUle‐to‐no content.
– Sites that violated content guidelines.
– Keyword stuffing and sneaky redirects.
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13. Penguin Update
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14. Google & Bing Likes! 
• Schema Meta Data!
• Sitemap XML!
• Site speed!
• Original content!
• Buzz!
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15. Google & Bing Dislikes. 
• Duplicate content.
• Slow sites.
• Garbage pages.
• Ignored sites.
• Links from “evil”
sites.
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16. What Used to Work &
What NOT to do now
• Bulk Back Links
• Content Farming
• Over Op9miza9on
• Keyword Stuffing
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17. Bulk Back‐Linking
• Incremental increases in back‐links to our
own site.
• Suspicious big jumps.
• Did move us to page one for several
compe99ve phrases.
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18. Uh‐oh…. Google Nas9gram.
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19. Mysterious Backlinks
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20. Bulk Ar9cle Marke9ng
• Basically “Paid Links” – a big no‐no.
• Very liUle “Link Diversity”
– “chicken recipes”
– “chicken recipes”
– “chicken recipes”
• No one asking the ques9on: “Does anyone
want to read this garbage?”
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21. Press Releases
• Press releases are highly
suscep9ble to misuse and
spam.
• Press releases with merit are
s9ll traffic drivers.
• MaU CuUs describes a
“con9nuum of content, and
the quality of that content,
and what defines the value
add for a user.”
hUp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7sfUDr3w8I
Pandas & Penguins

22. Over‐Op9miza9on
• Keyword Domains:
– Why‐Does‐My‐Dog‐Seem‐Hungry‐All‐The‐Time.com
– WhatDoMacaquesEat.com
• Op9mized internal keyword‐laden links.
• High keyword density.
• Exact match of 9tles, headers, URL.
• Going beyond a reasonable effort to improve a
page.
• A perfect site is not always best.
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23. What’s Working Today?
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24. What’s Working Today?
Specialized Op9miza9on
• Content
– Pages worth reading.
– Uniqueness
– Reading Level Targe9ng
– Sites with images
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25. What’s Working Today?
Specialized Op9miza9on
• Site speed
– HTTP Compression
– Image Compression
– HTTP Requests
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26. What’s Working Today?
HTML Templates
• Google has to store this data, so we help to
keep it small.
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27. What’s Working Today?
HTML Templates
• Code bloat can be a
problem.
– Minify JavaScript
– Reduce the number of
included files
– Use CSS wisely
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28. What’s Working Today?
Indexability!
• Indexability
– XML Sitemaps
Diagnos9c
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29. What’s Working Today?
Indexability!
• Ideally we know exactly how many pages
should be indexed.
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30. What’s Working Today?
Indexability!
• Monitoring Google &
Bing’s Indices
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31. What’s Working Today?
Responsive Design & Infinite
Scrolling
• Flexible templates encourage HTML5 and
CSS3.
• Infinite Scrolling Speeds ini9al page load 9mes
and reduces paging.
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32. What’s Working Today?
Mobile Search
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33. What’s Working Today?
Social Widgets!
• Google +1’s do affect
search rankings.
• Choose highly
interes9ng and
compelling
informa9on to share.
• Don’t be afraid to use
Pinterest.
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34. What’s ahead for search?
• Google Knowledge Graph
• Facebook Search
• Smartphone/ Tablet Specific Results
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35. Google Knowledge Graph
• Based in seman9c search
• Currently only for popular culture searches
• Could be expanded in 2013
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36. Facebook Search
• Basing search rankings on “Likes” and “Reach”
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37. Mobile Search Results
• Likely to favor local results with relevant map
lis9ngs.
• Might favor responsive design sites and
homepages with click‐to‐call phone numbers.
• Likely to become device specific.
– iPads get different results than Blackberry
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38. Where can you learn more?
• Google and Bing Webmaster Help pages
• Newish Google Site: Webmaster Academy
hUp://bit.ly/webmasteracademy
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39. Q&A
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40. Thank you!
Joel Swaney – Joel@ninahale.com
Peter Quale – Peter@ninahale.com ‐ @pbq
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