Google Penguin and Panda updates have really caused some serious problems to many bloggers. You might be also be a victim of these updates if your blog is not properly organized or rather optimized for these updates. 
If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform then you should be aware that there are several things in WordPress that might make your blog get penalized by Google due to these various updates.
To help you out with this updates, I have come up with some tips that will help Making Your Blog Bulletproof From Penguin and Panda Updates, and if you are already penalized by these updates then it would improve your blog rankings.
Remove Junk Articles from your Blog
The first thing you should do regardless of the fact that you have been affected by these updates or if you want to prevent your blog from getting hit by these updates is to remove all junk or low quality contents from your blog.
Google hates low quality content, so if you are thinking or placing some low quality and short articles on your blog, or have already done so, then you should think about it, as your blog might get hit by the Google Panda update. There lies a very high probability that Google will sue your blog for holding junk articles.
So, take some time, and remove all the low quality articles, mainly the articles that are not relevant to your blog, and are of very short length. However, there are no exact length specified by Google, but still you should not have articles below 500 words to be on the safe side.
Make sure WordPress is not Harming your Blog
WordPress if not properly optimized can harm your blog by making your blog get hit by these updates from Google, and resulting in a significant drop in rankings and traffic from Google. WordPress has a tendency to generate junk pages like attachment pages and replytocom pages.
These pages contain nothing but images and comments, which are considered as poor quality content, unless someone writes a comment on your blog which is equivalent to a good article. So, Google sees these pages as low quality content, and thus ultimately treats your blog as a hub of low quality and spam content.
Make sure your blog does not generate any attachment pages, by choosing to link your images on your post to the original image file, rather than an attachment page.
You can prevent the formation of replytocom pages by using plugins like SEO by Yoast, or by making sure that your blog generates links to comments with a hash, like this one,
http://allbloggingtips.com/yourarticle/#comment-1
You can easily achieve these kind of links by using the plugin mentioned above. If by chance you are having a lot of these of pages already generated by WordPress for your blog, then do take some time to remove those pages from Google index using the URL Removal tool on Google Webmasters.
Link carefully!
You should always make sure that you don’t link to a site that doesn’t falls into your niche or is a site which is marked as spam by Google. There may come many situations when you might want to link to a site that is off-topic or of a niche that is totally different from yours, but you should always make sure that you don’t link to such sites from neither any article nor from anywhere on your site.
If you are linking to these kind of sites, then your blog will get hit by the Google Penguin update for referring to spam or irrelevant sites, and it’s a genuine cause, as a blog which is based on technology, should not link to a casino site or a health related site.
If you have already linked to such sites, then you should immediately remove such links from your blog articles or from anywhere on your blog from where you have placed the links. You might get offers from various people to place such links on your site, its better not to accept such offer and link to irrelevant sites, which will ultimately cause harm to your blog.
This concludes the article and I hope that everyone reading this article will find the tips mentioned helpful in Making Your Blog Bulletproof From Penguin and Panda Updates. If you have suggestions or queries then you are always welcome to place your comments below.
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{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
I don’t think that your article should be more than 500 words!
Lets take an example of Mashable!
Its every article is less than 500 and still its rocking and will always do the same!
All you need is to not to over-optimize , no copied articles should be posted on your blog, and you should not link to bad quality site!
That’s it..
Dhruv recently posted..SEO Tips For Bloggers In 2013
Yup you are right there Dhruv that Mashable writes articles below 500 words and still its rocking, but I would like to tell you that Google recognizes Mashable as a news site, and a news article won’t be of 1000 words unless it’s a pretty big story.
Secondly, Mashable has become a popular brand. It gets a whole lot of direct traffic too apart from getting traffic from Google.
If your site has all the articles which are below 500 words and your blog is updated frequently,then that shouldn’t be a problem, but in case your blog has a 300 words article along with 6-7 articles of length 700 or 800 words, then that might cause a problem due to the Google Panda effect.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..Top 5 TED Talks that Shows Us the Future
hi dhruv, you are wright. Most of the blog i have seen that they are writing short content when we are trying to write something special and want to describe briefly for our visitors. but still i saw that they are really getting good result. but personally i am not get the success to write short content in my blog. please tell me the trick to improve my search result.
Shanta Dsuza recently posted..How To Increase Earnings By Blogging Without Google Adsense
A bit confused on the article length part. Here is what i think: if your blog has a good reputation, ranks well and has unique content. It doesnt matter if you write a 300 word article, you are safe. I think google respects page rank and unique content more than anything else.
Yes it won’t matter if your blog has articles majority of which are short in length, but if you write a majority of articles on your blog which are about 700-800 words and insert some articles in between of word length about 300 words, then that might cause a problem.
And I had mentioned this in the post “However, there are no exact length specified by Google”, I just gave a rough estimation of 500 words to be on the safe side.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..Top 5 TED Talks that Shows Us the Future
I agree with Rahul about the tips mentioned in this post. Also, I would like to add something. You should also watch out for Google human reviewers. You should have these things: About Us, contact details, page load time, and relevance of your site. They will also check if you have many ads in your site. Good post!
Tony Nguyen recently posted..Internet Sales Machine Review
Thanks Tony for your appreciation. Never heard about that before, thanks a lot for your suggestion as well.
Yes you everyone should have those pages, and follow a niche for their blog, and about ads, focusing on the Panda updates, if your site has a lot of ads, then Google will sue your site for sure.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..Groupon Clone Script Reviews: An Analysis and Report
i wish to add a point to this.can i rahul…avoid shameless copy -paste work for your blog…may be Google algorithm is a software.but it can find out content thief.so be professional and make professional your website and blog.it will help to protect your blog from any algoithm updations.
Yes absolutely Shafeeq, thanks for your suggestion. Google hates duplicate content, and Google will penalize your blog if it has duplicate posts.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..4 Tips to Write a Great Guest Post
How can I know which website is marked as a spam website by Google? And If my blog has 20-25 articles (out of 500+ articles) less than 400 word then is it a big issue for Google?
Jagannath Nayak recently posted..Corning to Debut Gorilla Glass 3 at the stage of CES 2013 Event
That’s the problem mate, you cannot understand which websites are marked as spam by Google, but you should always try to link those sites which falls into your niche. For example, if you have a Technology blog, then wouldn’t probably link to a Health or Casino site.
Since the ratio is less, so it might not be a big issue, but you should always try to keep your blog clean.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Thanks for the quick answer
You are welcome.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Rahul nice article about how to protect blog from penguin and panda updates.is duplicate metadescriptions are also effect on our blog rankings?
It might Raman, though I don’t have any exact information about that, but from my experience I can say is that they might, and there’s a good chance of it.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Great points, you’ve. But I’d like to differ a bit, Rahul! I believe that the very best way to bullet-proof your blog from Panda, Penguin or any other updates that Google has in its Zoo is to build a blog that doesn’t depend on Google. One major way is ensuring you take advantage of social networks, Video sharing sites, guestblogging and so on to build a solid list. The advantage here is that you’ll be able to create social signals and activity on your blog thus making it difficult for Google NOT to treat you with respect.
Chimezirim Odimba recently posted..Perfect Customer Life Circle Marketing
Yes you have some good points too mate, but you should also look after the things on your blog which Google really cares about.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Making unwanted pages, tags and categories noindex is very important. Without which you may endup having lots of duplicate content.
Right use of Pagination and canonical tags are essential.
~@Khajamoin1
Khaja moin recently posted..6 Reasons Why No One Comments On Your Blog
Yup that’s a good point mate, everyone should make these categories, tags and other pagination pages marked as “noindex”, so that Google, doesn’t treats these pages as articles on your site.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Oh my, I am now thinking removing my blog roll. ALso, this might take me several days in removing short articles. Thanks for sharing this, I’ll tell this to my co-bloggers!
Semidoppel recently posted..The Social Media and I: Bridging the Past, Present and Future (Remembering Through my Journey in Blogging)
You are welcome mate, better be safe than sorry.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Hello @Rahul Good Article. I am Agree your all point but My according 500+ content post are not important. I have seen lot off blog and post only 300+ content. for exp: onsecrethunt, labnol etc.
Rahul Kashyap recently posted..Crawlspace (2013)
Yes that’s because Labnol and other sites like that provides short tips and all of their articles are short, they don’t have out of 100 articles, 70 lengthy and 30 short articles.
And I have mentioned this in the article “However, there are no exact length specified by Google”, so 500 words is a rough estimation that I have made to keep everyone on the safe side.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
My blog was hit by panda,about 4 months ago and I am still trying to get rid of it but haven’t got success.What you say should I leave it and start working on any other blog ?
mohit recently posted..How Your Web Host Can Affect Your Search Rankings
No you can work on your current blog too, just follow the above mentioned steps, remove any unnecessary indexed pages from Google, and give some time for your blog to recover.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Hi Rahul,
Good tips for avoiding P&P effect. But I don’t think we should take content quality by number of words. People generally don’t like to read long content. If you can explain same thing in lesser words, its good. Quality must be judged by what people learn from your content.
Thanks for your suggestion for #comment tips. I have noted this & will make necessary changes.
Priya N recently posted..10 Things to Consider for Indian Bloggers Before They Start Blogging
I just gave an example by mentioning 500 words, and I also said that its a rough estimation, you can try having look at the previous comments, and you will understand what I mean.
Good to know that you found the suggestion helpful.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How To Remove replytocom Links And Prevent Duplicate Content Issues
Hi Rahul,
Just wanted to clarify:
You mentioned in this article that Google can sue a website for low quality articles?
“There lies a very high probability that Google will sue your blog for holding junk articles.” can this really happen?
Thanks,
Jes
Jes recently posted..Neck pain and chiropractic care in Charlotte, NC
Yes Jes, your site can get penalized, even the whole site, for low quality and less valuable or spam like content, by Google.
Due to this you may start to see drop on rankings and traffic to your blog. Google is trying to make it’s search, so the new algo changes gives importance on this fact.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..Why Facebook Marketing is Difficult for Bloggers and How to do it?
How should we remove our junk articles ?
If we delete them then it will start giving 404 error. What should we do to 404 error ?
Nice post.
Thank you
Jeniffer recently posted..Safeguarding your Health through Aromatherapy
Remove them from your blog, and remove them from the Google Index too, by using the URL Removal Tool in Google Webmasters. That should do it Jeniffer.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..8 Beautiful Ways to Create Music Slideshows Online
Yes, some of the basic but true things you have described for safeguarding from Google Panda, comments links can sometimes lead to this problem also, so I would like to take caution on it also! (use nofollow always for it)
Krishna Parmar recently posted..Fring Sign In & Register Account
Yup you are right there mate, comment links can also cause harm due to the Penguin updates, one should be careful when approving the links from the comments. Thanks for the suggestion
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..How to remove WordPress Image Attachment Pages and recover from Panda Hit
Do you think a 500 words article are over optimized? I don’t mean to offend you but what I understood about high quality articles is that it should always be 500 words or even if its not as long as the topic is catchy.
I didn’t get your point Dorothy. What do you mean by “Do you think a 500 words article are over optimized?”.
i heard replytocom links are unhealthy and serve no purpose…so removed em a while back using webmaster tools…we should always check GWT to find out where our blog links are flying around! thanks fr the post rahul
Gautam Doddamani recently posted..Install Facebook Open Graph Protocol using WordPress SEO easily
You are welcome Gautam, and yes replytocom links can cause serious damage to your blog. Good job man.
In the Past I was hit by Google Panda and My Website suffered a Sudden Drop in Traffic / PageRank / Alexa Rank etc. I was really frustrated and tried a lot to recover from it. Now I’m happy to say that I’ve recovered from it and Today my website is even higher then it was before Panda hitting…
Rahul This is a very good article and I’m sure will help those who’ve been hit by Panda. Thanks a lot
Jimmie Luthra recently posted..7 Reasons Why Android is Better than iOS
You are welcome Jimmie, and glad to know that you didn’t lose hope and recovered from the Panda hit.
Rahul Chowdhury recently posted..Why I will never Choose and Recommend Hostgator again?