Panda Recovery Strategies and How to Improve Your Site’s Quality Score


In our previous article, we explored the Panda Algorithm and the reason behind Google’s implementation of this update. Let’s continue with this conversation.

Effects of Panda on Your Website

Each website has a “Quality Score” assigned by Google. Sites that saw a sudden, massive traffic drop were probably hit without them knowing it but even new sites can also be affected by Panda, making it really hard to rank. A lot of older sites are losing rankings and don’t know why.

Google is out to reward “high quality sites” and penalize sites with a poor quality score. If Google thinks that your website is not adding value, your quality score drops. If Google thinks your site is outdated, it will be harder to rank. If you’re selling products online, it’s important to have a high quality score. Most eCommerce sites got hit because of the seemingly duplicate content of similar products presented in different pages. Unless changes are done to your site, it will remain penalized. Google is not only after your site, it’s also after your business model.

The Panda Equation and your Website’s Quality Score

So how will you know your ranking if your Quality Score is hidden from you as a webmaster? Here’s a formula that you can use to determine your ranking:

Panda Quality Score / 100 x old ranking factors = your rank

The equation used to determine your Panda Quality Score is:

[Static Elements] x [Quality Checks] x [User Experience] = Panda Quality Score

This equation tells us that there are 3 elements that Google uses to determine your website’s score. These elements can be improved upon to raise your quality score and restore your ranking as well.

Static Elements – make sure the content and information in each element is unique:

  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Page – must include: valid author or multiple authors, mailing address, email address, phone number, author tags, shipping and warranty information (for ecommerce sites)
  • About Us
  • Terms of Service
  • Disclosure of Possible of Compensation (for affiliate or review sites)

Quality Checks – Check the quality of your coding. Broken, obsolete, deprecated, or outdated code, hidden text, overlapping text, and exploding images should be fixed.

User Experience – Improving user experience is now a major element to improving your site’s ranking. Stats on bounce rate, user engagement, and page depth or how deep visitors go into the site give Google an idea how involved a visitor is when they visit your site. The longer they stay on your site, the better for your website’s score.

Website owners need to evaluate their sites regularly to assess whether they have issues related to these three elements. Addressing these issues promptly will help keep their site in check and hopefully stay in Google’s good graces.

35 Creative and Hilarious Examples Of Well Known Caricatures which will make you Laugh Definitely

When I asked a friend of mine, who is a model and has a perfect shaped body, about how to stay fit she said that I must exercise a lot and eat less and also try to remain happy all the time. This view is shared by many other nutritionists and gym coaches too. Humor can play an integral role in keeping us fit and healthy. Humor’s role is not merely entertainment. It is also a medicine for keeping us fit.

Wikipedia defines a caricature to be a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person, animal or object to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. Almost all newspapers and magazines have professional cartoonists to design quality cartoons and/or caricatures for their publication. Cartoons/caricatures are a powerful and sarcastic tool to comment upon any social or political situation. The controversy that arises every now and then over cartoons is proof of the fact that cartoons command an equal impact as, say, news articles.

Below I present you with 35 hilarious caricatures of well known public figures. All the images have been twisted intentionally to make them more interesting and hilarious. So scroll down and enjoy.

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StyleShop – Elegant Theme’s 81st (And It’s an eCommerce One)

Elegant Themes has just released its 81st theme – the robust and beautiful eCommerce theme StyleShop – and it’s worth the wait. Say goodbye to the glossy mail order catalogues and get your glossy magazine fix with StyleShop Premium WordPress Theme.

StyleShop is glamorous and edgy and not your typical and functional looking eCommerce theme. You can tell the difference from the way the design elements have been seamlessly integrated into various sections of the theme. The attention to detail and the thoughtful process of making sure the user experience is pleasant and enjoyable is a trademark of Elegant Themes. The homepage is clear and easily navigable. It greets you with an impressive dynamic slider you would love to showcase your products with. It also includes a mini slider you can use to feature specials or specific product categories you want to bring attention to. You can also set up a mini gallery of your hottest, latest, most popular products as a teaser to the rest of your inventory. The great thing about this theme is the integrated WooCommerce plugin that handles the whole checkout process ensuring a seamless handling of transactions with popular payment methods.

Styleshop Premium WordPress Theme looks great on smartphones and tablets with its fully responsive design. It even has a side menu especially designed for smartphones to facilitate a faster shopping experience. This responsive theme can be easily customized with the powerful Theme ePanel that allows you to tweak and adjust design features as you please. In addition, the theme comes with lots of shortcodes you can use for more detailed control over the theme.

Features:

  • Responsive Design
  • Theme Options
  • Shortcodes
  • Page Templates
  • Perpetual Updates
  • Secure and Valid Code
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Complete Localization
  • Unlimited Colors
  • Unparalleled Support

StyleShop Premium WordPress Theme includes top-notch tech support provided by Elegant themes’ support staff to help you setup your site and get it running in no time.

Get StyleShop And 80 More Themes for $39

WooThemes Shuts Down Their Affiliate Program

It’s true. Disappointing but unfortunately true. For what reason? Here’s what WooThemes posted on their website:

We’re sorry to say that we are discontinuing our referral program because of lack of traction for the program. Access to signup and login has been removed for the time being. We will be in touch with all existing affiliates prior to discontinuing the program with further details. Thank you for your patience in this regard.

In a newsletter addressed to Woo affiliates, Adii wrote:

I’m in the unfortunate position to let you know that we will be closing our referral program on Friday, 8 February 2013. In the last couple of months, the costs to maintain the referral program have exceeded the benefit of keeping it around. We have also experienced so much fraud & abuse on the referral program, which means it is currently losing money for us.

This seemingly drastic decision has left hundreds and thousands of affiliates hanging in mid-air wondering what hit them. For long-time affiliates, all the years of plowing and link building efforts have gone down the drain and all for naught. For whatever internal reasons WooThemes might have for shutting down their affiliate program, the “lack of traction” reason for public consumption seems rather lame and lacking in substance.

Many of their affiliates, especially those who have been around for quite some time, understand business cycles, seasonality, and the normal ups and downs of business operations. To say that it was mainly because of prevalent fraud and abuse of the referral program that has caused them to lose money more than generate income puts a shadow on their management policies and practices. Even if it were so, legitimate affiliates should not be punished for that. In the broader picture of all that has happened, this incident also casts a longer shadow and raises doubts even on the way they handle their WordPress themes program.

Of course, everyone is entitled to benefit of the doubt but the way that WooThemes has been handling it so far has been wanting. What is to happen to all those who have already put in the work and are waiting to receive their commissions? The work is already done and the service has been rendered but what remuneration can these affiliates expect? Not to mention all the admin work and backend hassle. Affiliates are still sending traffic to WooThemes through their affiliate links but now they are simply not getting paid. Online business relationships are based heavily on trust and unless the issues at hand are addressed head on, the consequences could cost WooThemes more than the loss they incurred from their affiliate program. We hope not.

WordPress Admin Panel

Navigating your way around in the backend area of your WordPress website need not be complicated even if you are a beginner. The WordPress Admin Panel area found in the backend is a powerful and flexible area where you can manage your website content and other WordPress functions. It has continually evolved since 2003 and with the help of and contributions from the WordPress community has improved and become more and more beautiful and user friendly.

The Administration Panel provides access to the control features of your WordPress installation. Each Administration Panel is presented in sections:

The Header

The top portion of all Panels, the header, is featured in dark shading. The header shows the name of your blog as a link to your blog’s main page, comments awaiting moderation, +New to add new posts, pages, media, or users, a Search Engines Blocked message if you Privacy settings block search engines, a favorites menu, and links to your profile (shown as your user name), and Log Out. Just below the top shaded area are two hanging tabs, Screen Options and contextual Help, that can be clicked to expand them.

The Main Navigation

On the left side of the screen is the main navigation menu detailing each of the administrative functions you can perform. Two expand/collapse arrows just below the Dashboard and Comments allow the navigation menu to collapse to a set of icons, or expand (fly-out) to show an icon and description for each major administrative function. Within each major function, such as Posts, a pull-down arrow is presented upon hovering mouse hovers over the title area. A click of that arrow expands the menu to display each of the sub-menu choices. Clicking that arrow again collapses the sub-menu.

The Work Area

The large area in the middle of the screen is the work area. It is here where specific information relating to a particular navigation choice, such as adding a new post, is presented and collected.

The Footer

Finally, in the footer, at the bottom of each Administration Panel in dark shading, are links to WordPress, Documentation, and Feedback. In addition, the version of WordPress you have installed is shown. Just below the menu tab section, if your version is NOT the latest version, you will see the message An updated version of WordPress is available. Please update now. Click on the provided link to navigate to the Updates SubPanel.

Below is a list of the submenu items you will find in your default WordPress Admin Panel main navigation menu. Some of them may or may not be included depending on the WordPress version you have installed.

Dashboard

The Dashboard tells you about recent activity both at your site and in the WordPress community at large and provide access to updating WordPress, plugins, and themes.

WordPress Updates

This sub panel gives you an easy method to update WordPress, plugins, and themes. Note not all hosts will allow the automatic update process to work successfully and will require you to manually upgrade by following the Upgrading WordPress instructions.

Posts

This sub panel is where you can publish writings, compositions, discussions, discourses, musings, and, yes, even rantings, of a blog owner and contributors. Here you can write new Posts, create new Categories, new Tags, and new Custom Fields. In addition, any Media (pictures, video, recordings, files) can be uploaded and inserted into the Posts.

Media

This sub panel allows you to upload new media to later use with posts and pages. A Flash Uploader is provided and the ability to use a Browser Uploader is supplied if the Flash Uploader does not work.

Pages

A good example of a Page is the information contained in About or Contact Pages. A Page should not be confused with the time-oriented objects called Posts, nor should a WordPress Page be confused with the word page referring to any web page or HTML document on the Web. In this Sub Panel you can select the Page to edit or delete. Multiple Pages can be selected for deletion and for editing. As with Posts, a powerful bulk edit tool allows certain fields to be edited for a whole group of Pages. A handy in-line edit tool, called Quick Edit, allows you to update many fields for an individual Page. Various search and filtering options allow you to find the Pages you want to edit or delete.

Comments/Reader Feedbacks

Comments are a feature of blogs which allow readers to respond to Posts. In this sub panel you can edit and delete as well as mark comments as spam. Comments that are awaiting moderation can be marked as approved or previously approved comments can be unapproved. Multiple comments can be selected and approved, marked as spam, unapproved, or deleted. A section at the top of the Comments SubPanel displays the number of comments awaiting moderation and the number of approved comments. A search box allows you to find specific comments.

Appearance

From the Presentation Administration Panel you can control how the content of your blog is displayed. WordPress allows you to easily style your site by either installing and activating new Themes or changing existing Themes. This sub panel includes customization controls for Themes, Widgets, Menus, Background, Header, and Theme Editor.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to add new features to your WordPress blog that don’t come standard with the default installation. This sub panel allows you to view the plugins you’ve downloaded, add new plugins, modify the plugins and choose which plugins you want activated on your site.

Users

Every WordPress site probably has at least two users: the admin, the account initially set up by WordPress, and the user account you, as the author/owner of the blog. This sub panel allows you to set up all of the user accounts you need, change user information, assign roles, or delete users.

Tools

WordPress Tools provide you the ability to speed up WordPress for your local machine, import content from other sources, export your content, or to upgrade your WordPress software to a new release. This includes the Import, Export, and Press This functions.

Settings

The Settings Administration Panel contains all of the settings that define your website as a whole: settings which determine how your site behaves, how you interact with your site, and how the rest of the world interacts with your site. This sub panel includes control settings for: General (basic configuration settings), Writing, Reading, Discussion, Media, Privacy, and Permalinks
(source: WordPress codex)

The backend or Admin Panel may vary from theme to theme. The look and appearance may vary depending on the customizations and tweaks done by authors and developers. Nevertheless, no matter how Admin Panel is tweaked, these basic functions are standard and generally remain the same no matter what WordPress theme you install.

Theme Forest: The Ugly Truth About ThemeForest.net

ATTN: If you are a ThemeForest author and are interested in selling your business or profile, let us know.

I wanted to let you know about a site that has quickly become one of my favorites to visit. It’s one of those sites that once you know about it, you find yourself going back to it every day (or sometimes even a couple times per day) just to see what’s new.

In mid-2008 I stumbled across Theme Forest for the first time while searching for the best wordpress themes. At first I wasn’t that impressed, but I remember not spending very much time investigating just what this “Theme Forest” was. We all know there are a never ending supply of free and premium WordPress Themes online today, and at first glance this seemed to be just another choice in the virtually endless sources of WordPress wares. Thankfully, on closer examination, I realized that ThemeForest had not only addressed several of the major problems those of us face when “searching” for Premium WordPress Themes, they had done it in a very unique and inviting way. Well fast forward almost 5 years, and let me tell you about the Theme Forest of 2013.

ThemeForest in 2013

ThemeForest is a marketplace in the Envato network that is specifically for WordPress Themes and HTML Templates. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering just where you could find high quality premium WordPress themes or website templates, Theme Forest was created just for you.

There are many of these so-called “marketplaces” for just about every type of product or service you may need when doing business online, but I’d like to explain why Theme Forest is different and why they have become the first place I turn for just about everything I need to run one of my many websites.

The ThemeForest Difference

Simply put, they are a destination for WordPress and web developers to list their themes and website templates to people just like you and me. The reason this is so powerful is because it totally goes against the “norm” when it comes to purchasing a WordPress theme or html template.

Typically, you go to Company A’s website where they offer Product 1, 2, and 3. You can buy their work and their work only.

Now imagine if you had the opportunity to brows the work of hundreds and thousands of different web developers? Imagine if you could preview any website, template, or theme before you pruchased it? Imagine if you could read the comments from others who have purchased it, see which themes or templates are most popular, and even rate the work for even more transparency?

This is exactly what you get with ThemeForest, but there is so much more…

Not only can you browse, purchase, and interact with thousands of developers and customers from across the globe, you also have the chance to sell you themes and templates to a dedicated and growing community.

As proof to how large and powerful this community has become, there are several authors who have crossed their $1,000,000 in sales threshold. This is an astonishing achievement for both those authors and the concept of ThemeForest as a whole.

Other Envato MarketplacesThe Best Part About Theme Forest

But do you want to know what I love the absolute most about Theme Forest?

Envato (the company behind Theme Forest) has not only built the best marketplace for WordPress Themes and HTML Templates, they have created similar marketplaces for video files, pre-built coding solutions, web graphics, and flash files just to name a few.

Imagine being able to have just one account that let’s you buy and sell everything from stock audio to fully developed web templates that are both HIGHLY professional, focused on web standards and usability, and at absolutely rock-bottom prices!

Theme Forest closely examines each theme or template uploaded to the marketplace to ensure that only quality authors with quality products can list their work.

As the end user, you have the ability to quickly and easily access just about everything you need to run a website from a network of developers, coders, artists, and audio experts…and you can do it all from one account!

It is completely free to setup an account with Theme Forest, and this one account can be used to browse all of the other sites in the Envato Marketplace.

The Bottom Line: I’ve been doing business online for nearly 8 years now. Rarely have I been so impressed with a product that within a matter of a few weeks I can’t imagine doing business without it. This is just the type of marketplace Envato has created and one you simply can’t afford to miss.

If you are looking for professional, high-end products for your website at beyond reasonable prices, I encourage you to head over to ThemeForest and setup your free account today.

May, 2011: ThemeForest has made some slight changes to their site design, and we’re noticing a slight increase in prices for a few product lines. Perhaps this is the beginning of a rise in prices.

January, 2012: Some estimates we’ve heard put the Envato marketplaces at over 2 million members (and growing).

February, 2013: ThemeForest continues to be the largest WordPress Theme marketplace in the world. If you are an established author from ThemeForest, consider selling us your business.

Elegant Themes Launches Lifetime Option

For business people, time is a precious commodity. The busier they are the more deliberate they are on how they spend it. Most of the time they do not want to waste their time on business decisions like necessary recurring business expenditures that can be dealt with once and for all. Why? Because they already know that these activities are necessary to their business and they know that they will repeat themselves over and over again and . So instead of spending time repeating something that can be done once they opt to get rid of this tick list item so that they could spend their time on other things that need more of their attention.

If you are a busy WordPress professional building, servicing and handling several website accounts and you want to save yourself time doing admin stuff and spend more time marketing, developing, or providing support to your clients, you might want to check out one of Elegant Themes’ licensing options – the Lifetime Access license. What’s great about it?

Aside from the affordable Personal License for the average user and the extremely Popular Developer License for experienced designers, Elegant Themes also offers Lifetime Access for a one time fee of $249 which is perfect for the busy WordPress professional who wants to maximize his working hours. What does the Lifetime Access License include?

You get:

  • Complete Access To Every Theme – around 81 beautiful and functional themes as of this writing
  • Perpetual Theme Updates
  • Premium Technical Support
  • Complete Access To Every Plugin
  • Layered Photoshop Files
  • NO YEARLY FEES

If we do the math, for $249, it will cost approximately more or less $3 (as of this writing) for each theme, plugin, not counting the psd files, updates, support, and, not including all future themes and plugins yet to be released. At the rate Elegant Themes is releasing new themes, the cost per theme will go down even more. Not only that, you don’t need to pay yearly fees ever, you lessen your admin load, and save time which you can use to do something else. Sounds like a good investment, don’t you think?
Check out Elegant Themes today.

Get Elegant Themes Lifetime

Consumerism, The Dollar Store Mentality, and the Global Digital Marketplace

We live under various economic conditions all around the globe, governed by different economic and fiscal policies, that may or may not directly affect the spending habits of the average consumer. However, no matter how the economy is doing wherever you are or how much money you have in your pocket, people will always want to live the good life – a gratifying, enjoyable and comfortable life – regardless. This human need serves as the fuel that drives businesses to market their products to fulfill that desire for the “good life”. The rapid turnover of gadgets and electronic products, and the scarcity or exclusivity of luxury cars, houses, holidays, and other luxury items keep consumers on their toes waiting to buy the next new thing. This is characteristic of the Baby Boomer type of consumer. Work hard. Play hard. Consumerism.

However, analysts and marketers foresee a growing trend – a shift. Today’s digital age is seeing the rise of the “millennials” or “digital natives” – (those born in an era of technology and have grown up with computers, the Internet, and constant connectedness) who use digital wallets and technology-enabled payment tools – who spend their money shopping in app stores, who buy a single music track instead of a whole album, who download software, games, ebooks, other digital media products, aside from the usual physical products.

These modern day, tech enabled consumers rely on technology to research products, discounts, deals, coupons, customer reviews, product information, and other related info on their smartphones or handheld devices. Millennials enjoy the thrill of discovery, the joy of a bargain, the pleasure of sharing, and the power to influence the purchasing decisions of others. Which brings us to say that, one of the major influences to their spending decisions is also the general consensus or sentiments of their social network connections. This shopping behaviour means that today’s consumer goes through more processes before clicking that “confirm purchase” button. What does this mean and how does this impact your business?

This means that businesses should work towards removing perceived barriers and obstacles their consumers encounter. People love to buy but the first thing on their mind is “How much?” It is the first barrier to them making that purchase. One business strategy to lowering if not totally eliminating that first barrier is by employing the “Dollar Store Mentality” to your product pricing. What does this mean?

When people believe that things are a dollar or less, they should be bought in bulk because they are so cheap.

When you lower the consumer’s perceived risk in making a purchase, the easier you make it for them to buy – no matter where they are in the world or what demographic they belong to. This is not to say that everything should be priced at a dollar literally. A product or service that is low cost (relative to similar products in the market) or especially if free will surely attract people like bees to honey. Although this might mean taking advantage of the consumer’s emotional and impulse buying predisposition, this strategy also means that you are opening up a safe entry point for you to introduce your product and for people to try them out with minimal risk. Because the pricing is friendly, the purchasing process becomes easy, fun and addicting, and eventually habit forming. If the product is good, the people will stay, share, and even influence others to patronize your business. Yes, they will talk about you. These habitual customers now become the bedrock for you to start establishing your customer base. As you continue to build trust and confidence in your product and in your business, you can slowly and steadily build customer relationships. Once these relationships are built and established, these customers become more receptive and when you introduce offers for additional products or services at a premium price they don’t pull back because they feel connected to you. The ultimate goal is not just to make a quick sale but to establish a long-term relationship with your customers which is mutually beneficial to both of you in the long run.

P.S. – Don’t Forget Your WordPress Footer

Save the best for last, so they say, and you can very well do so by optimizing your WordPress footer. The footer, more or less, is an indicator of your website’s personal style. Not all people like flooding their footer with links. Those who subscribe to the minimalist approach prefer a couple of links or so as a subtle reminder to users that they are at the bottom of the page. Others prefer to engage and encourage users to explore a little bit more. Whatever your style preference is, the footer is a useful navigational tool you can use to highlight important content that you would like users to know about.

The footer is essentially another sidebar that can be filled with widgets, secondary information, or even a simple copyright notice if that’s all you prefer. It frees up your sidebar to contain the more urgent call to action items or important links your users need to be aware of. Nevertheless, it is still prime real estate on your site as it is the last thing the user sees when he scrolls all the way to the bottom of the page. The WordPress code for the footer can appear like the one below. Use a wp_footer() call, to appear just before closing body tag:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>

Below is a list of content that you may or may not add to your footer:

  • Social Network Links
  • Recent Posts | Pages
  • Categories
  • Feeds | Feed Links
  • Newsletter Subscription
  • Designer Credit(s)
  • Random Quotes
  • Advertisements
  • About
  • Links to Recommended Resources
  • Pictures | Flickr feed
  • Credit and Thanks
  • Popular Posts within your blog/site
  • Links to tutorials or “must read first” articles
  • Calendar
  • Tag List or Tag Cloud
  • Copyright

If you choose to optimize your footer with SEO techniques be sure to take into account recent Google Panda and Penguin updates to make sure your website will not be penalized for “over optimizing” and simply stick to links that are really useful.