Continuing on form our last blog here is part two of our feature on Google Panda. The clues to how your website is really performing are in your Google Analytics. Look for high bounce rates of over 40% - this indicates you are not holding your visitor’s attention. Look for low page views – 2 pages or less means your website is not attracting their full interest and giving them incentive to read more. Look for patterns in visitor behaviour to your site – which page is landed on most often? Where are the views coming from? Most companies will find their pages views are coming from existing connections and this shows they are not attracting new visitors. Where are the new viewers? They are there, millions of them! And you really can attract more people and boost sales by paying closer attention to and improving the content, the look of your website, the calls to action you give your visitors, and the way your website is designed to function. Think about it. If you walked into a shop and it was dark, dingy, had piles of non-descript boxes, no sales assistant, and looked as if it hadn’t been occupied for weeks, would you hang around to buy something? Think about how ALL the high-end designer labels sell their brands. Think about how they present a lifestyle choice, or meet a need in their customers. Whether you are selling plumbing material, shoes, cars, or a professional engineering service, you can use this type of branded marketing to make your visitors sit up and take notice. And when you do that, the Google Panda will be very pleased indeed. Here are our top tips on writing good quality articles that will generate traffic to your website or social media page and if you do this, you will keep the Panda happy too. 1. Always write high quality content – This may seem blatantly obvious but just a simple search online will reveal the vast amount of badly written, grammatically incorrect, and unprofessionally written trash that it out there! Internet users who come across this spam invariably ignore it, clicking away from it, never to return. Do you want your company or organisation to be associated with that behaviour? By only publishing high quality information, informative news, and engaging content, you will elevate your brand’s reputation as an expert in its field or industry. That’s how you build a name for yourself. Take your time, write with purpose and write properly. If you are not confident, hire a professional writer, the higher quality content will give you a higher return on your investment. 2. Always check your content – check your sources, double check facts, have it proof read and checked for any errors, whether factual or grammatical. Your content has to be perfect at all times. No excuses. Make sure there are keywords in your article, but keep them to a minimum and only use them naturally within the text. If you have one keyword phrase, use it once, not once in very paragraph! 3. Design is everything – How often have you bought something for your home that was completely ugly? When was the last time you bought a new set of clothes because they looked hideous? Would you ever buy an ugly car? An internet user who comes across your content will not give it a second glance if it does not look the part. Whether it’s fair or not, looks are everything in today’s world and that includes your website, content, and articles. 4. Use images that say something, or mean something – This is not easy to achieve, we’re not all creatively inclined and we don’t all have graphic design talents. The rule of thumb is, use images that build your brand image. Use images that are either royalty free or that you own the copyright for. If you use stock photography, be careful not to use images that are on a thousand other websites, blogs and article pages. Be real, be honest, and be creative. If you are not sure how to achieve this, hire a professional to help you. Images say far more than words and the rise of the internet has made first impressions even more important. When a user comes across your work online, you have less than ten seconds to attract their attention. Think about how you interact with your Facebook newsfeed. Think about the words and images that make you stop and read more, or even click on the update. Your articles and content should have the same enticing effect so don’t waste the valuable opportunity to attract more people by putting them off before they even have a chance to read your words.