Content and search go hand in hand, and a solid content marketing strategy that integrates seamlessly with your search strategy will be the locomotive that drives increasing amounts of traffic from Google to your website. But if you're not careful, Google menagerie of algorithm changes could derail all your hard work.

1. April 17, 2015
University of Missouri-St. Louis
J.C. Penney Conference Center
DON'T LET PANDAS AND
PENGUINS DERAIL YOUR
CONTENT!
Kari Rippetoe
Marketing Mojo

2. About Kari
Director of Content and
Marketing Services,
Marketing Mojo
www.marketing-mojo.com
@KariRippetoe

3. About Marketing Mojo
• Demand generation marketing firm founded in 2005
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Online Advertising
• Content marketing
• Marketing automation
• Analytics consulting
• Headquartered in Charlottesville, VA

6. Codename: Panda
First released into wild:
February, 2011
Modus Operandi:
Targets low-quality or
“thin” content, also
duplicate and/or
“scraped” content.
Google Quality Raters
evaluate trustworthiness
of site.

7. Codename: Penguin
First released into wild:
April, 2012
Modus Operandi:
Targets websites that
are in violation of
Google Webmaster
Guidelines,
specifically unnatural
links/linking
“schemes”.

8. Am I a Victim of Panda or Penguin?
Step 1: Check Google Webmaster Tools
• Do you have any manual action notifications in GWT?
Step 2: Check your analytics
• Did your organic traffic suddenly drop off?
• Does it only affect Google traffic?
Step 3: Pinpoint the date
• Does it correspond with a recorded algorithm update?
http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

9. Why is My
Content Being
Penalized by
Google?

10. 1. It’s Being Duplicated on Other Sites
Other sites are scraping your
content without links or
attribution
Your syndicating your content
to other sites and not getting
links or attribution

11. How Can You Fix It?
• Use canonical tags
• Tells Google the preferred URL for your content
• http://bit.ly/UMSLCanonical
• Reassess your syndication strategy
• Are they publishing the full or partial article?
• Are you getting links back to the original on your site?
• Test for scraped content using Copyscape
• Contact the site owners to ask for removal
• Submit a request to Google if they won’t remove it
• http://bit.ly/RemovingContent

12. 2. You Have Unnatural Links

14. How Can You Fix It?
• Check Webmaster Tools for flagged links
• Do those websites look spammy?
• Also use other tools to check links: Ahrefs, Open Site Explorer,
SEO Spyglass
• Use Google’s Disavow tool
• Disavow the suspicious links
• PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!

15. Tips for Link Building
•Keep it natural
•Be cool with building links.
•It’s OK to ask for links.
•Don’t buy links.

16. 3. Your Content is Thin or of Poor Quality.

17. Low Quality Content Signals
•Duplicated content
•Ad-filled content
•Scraped content/low levels of
original content

18. How Can You Fix It?
• Check to see if your content has been scraped and take
steps to get it removed.
• Say NO to article spinning. Say YES to thoughtful, useful
content pieces.
• Don’t fill your pages with more ads than content.

19. 4. Your Content is Not Mobile-Friendly
21

20. How Can You Fix It?
• Configure your viewport for mobile.
• Specify viewport setting to browsers
• Responsive design
• Set your font sizes properly.
• Avoid pinching to zoom
• Use a minimum base font size of 16 CSS pixels
• Give your touch elements space
• Space out buttons, menu items, and text links so visitors can easily
select them

21. 5. Your Content Takes Too Long to Load

22. Tools for Checking Your Site Speed
•Google Developers PageSpeed
Insights - http://bit.ly/UMSLPageSpeed
•Pingdom -
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
•GTmetrix - http://gtmetrix.com/

24. How Can you Fix It?
• Don’t script-block yourself.
• JavaScript & CSS = speedbumps
• Move scripts to the footer
• Use asynchronous versions of third-party scripts
• Compress your images
• Tools: Smush.it
• Batch optimize images
• Enable Gzip compression
• Enabled on your website server
• Ensures all other files are compressed and optimized

25. How Can You Fix It?
• Leverage browser caching
• Tells browser to “remember” certain files so it doesn’t have to
download them again
• Cache all resources that don’t change frequently
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Servers located around the country or world
• Delivers certain site assets from the server closest to your user
• Combine and minify your JavaScript and CSS
• Organize your JavaScript and CSS into one file and “minify”
(compress) them

26. Wrap-Up
• Register your site with Google Webmaster Tools
• Monitor for duplicate content
• Evaluate your syndication strategy
• Useful, original content = linkable content
• Keep your link building strategies natural
• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
• Get your website up to speed

27. Thank You!
Email: krippetoe@marketing-mojo.com
Twitter: @KariRippetoe
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/karirippetoe