Panda 3.3 And 3.4: Data Refreshes With Minimal Impact
Google rolled out Panda 3.3 a year after they launched the first update on February 2011. The 3.4 version came a month after. Both were believed to have been minor refreshes which had minimal impact on the SERPs.

What’s It For

Panda 3.3 was a data refresh in the system to enable the search engine and its results to be more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web. It’s similar to version 3.2 which rolled out a month before which was mainly an update of the index and didn’t add or modify ranking signals. Similarly, 3.4 was also a data refresh only when it rolled out in March.

What Were Its Effects

For the Panda 3.3 update, some webmasters experienced substantial gains with organic referrals shooting up to 300 percent. Others weren’t so fortunate and suffered fluctuations with their site traffic, especially since the data refresh took about two days to complete. Panda 3.4, on the other hand, noticeably affected less than 1.6 percent of queries.

What It Means for You

The Panda filter has since been merged into the core algorithm, which means that the developers no longer run it separately during crawling and indexing. This is why the SERPs continue to provide relevant results to users.

It does entail more work for site operators, though, since you need to focus on unique and engaging content in today’s already saturated digital space. Google provided guidelines on how to create high-quality content.

Here are the factors that influence the quality of your content:

• Reliability – You must establish your brand’s reputation and credibility so that they can trust the information you impart to them through your website. Produce content that’s backed by facts referenced from reliable sources or glean knowledge from your expertise and experience to become a recognized authority in your niche.
  The way your website is laid out, and its navigation also plays a significant role in boosting people’s perceived trust for your brand. Have a consistent and predictable flow of pages internally to make it easy for users to explore your domain.
  Moreover, if you’re going to need your customers’ credit card information, you should ensure that you encrypt those pages through a security protocol to protect you and your buyers’ data. With this, you show consumers that you care about their welfare.
• Originality – Google developed Panda explicitly to discourage and devalue websites that scrape content off of others or put duplicates in their pages; thus, providing little or no value to searchers. As much as possible, generate unique material for each page in your domain.
  Make sure that you give substantial information to your readers by providing a complete and comprehensive description of a particular subject matter or incorporate insightful analysis for a topic. On the other hand, if you’re writing a news story, it’s best to get the viewpoint of both sides to paint a more holistic picture to your followers.
• Technicality – Impose quality control methods for each piece of content you publish. Edit and proofread your blog posts to scan for spelling and grammatical errors. Mistakes like these can have adverse effects on your reliability and authority as a source of information. Pay attention to the details in the pages you publish.
  Additionally, you shouldn’t bombard your target audience with overflowing ads in your content. Remember, Google already rolled out the Top-Heavy update which penalized websites with too many promotions “above the fold” or the first screen space that users see once they click on your link in the SERPs. Keep advertisements at a minimum to boost user experience for your site.
• Shareability – You must pick a primary theme or topic for your website and write content accordingly. These subtopics should be based on what your customers actually want to read or learn more about; it shouldn’t depend on what you think will generate and boost organic traffic to your site.
  Produce compelling content that’s a linkable asset for your brand. This means that people should want to bookmark your blog post or share it with their friends after they’ve read what you have to say. Infuse personality into your articles to give it a human feel, not a robot’s. Promote new content on various social media platforms to expand your reach and maximize the power of these channels. Plus, you also make it easier for them to share your link when you upload it on your official profiles or accounts.