Been pondering this for a while, and since one hat I wear is as a business strategist, thought I would share this. What I suggest business owners who use the Internet as a customer channel, should do and not do in light of Panda.
This does NOT apply to professional webmasters, per se, but to businesses who use the Internet as a tool, but not as THE major part of their business models.
DO strive to create best content you can FOR VISITORS. Ignore the SERPS. Please your customers, and while it makes sense to do basic SERP stuff, don't focus on it. Why? By focusing on how to "fix" sites that got penalized by Panda, you WILL, for the most part, lose.
It's clear that google is going to be constantly fixing things, because, to be blunt, their business model is being threatened, and right now their results are not very good.
If you own a business, and you are not a professional webmaster you can't keep up. If you are someone who spends 8 hrs a day building sites, different deal. For those of us who aren't web specialists, playing a game that requires constant updating isn't going to work.
DO remind yourself of the focus of your business. Did you start a business to spend all your time trying to learn how google is doing things? Or to do something else that includes search engines as a tool to get customers? It's different.
DO explore alternative ways to find customers that are not Google dependent. As an example, in our redesigns we're rss'ing our pages so we can auto-generate feeds from our static pages, auto update them, and then leverage them into the social networking world to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
DO NOT follow the "thin" Google advice. Coutts et all have mentioned some suggestions like spin off parts of your site, etc. Not doing it. Because we don't have enough information. Can subdomains work? Should spun off site domains have a different owner of record? Who knows.
I'm doing the opposite. Closing down sites or bringing them back into the umbrella of my main site. Why? Because spun-off sites increase maintenance costs and complexity, at least for us. I can't handle our existing sites (about 10-15) as it is. I need to be able to modify things fast, and I can't do that across a network of sites.
Besides, having various inter-linked domains is problematic for visitors anyway. I don't want my visitors to be going back and forth from one site to another, all with different looks.
DO integrate with other marketing methods, so that you push people to your website through promotions, social media stuff, etc. Reduce dependence on Google.
DO have faith in "content is king". Right now it feels like it isn't, but it's in Google's interest to reflect that. It's the only reason google exists, to help people find good stuff, so even if they aren't doing it right now, they will have to. Or become bit players, in a world of social media.
DO create content of varying types and lengths. This is smart because it meets the needs of various types of human visitors -- some looking for longer stuff, some for much less. We run articles from 400 words up to more than 2000 words, always have. This also prevents having to figure out Google and whether "size" matters.
DON'T use ezine type directories. Bring your content home, so you don't compete with yourselves, and recognize that a lot of these "directories" have been hit by Google Panda, anyway. We have about 20 of our articles on one such directory. Removing them. Besides, I find the majority of people reprinting from these sites are cheating and violating TOS.
DO repackage and reuse your content. We're loosening our reprint licence terms to allow people to legally share material from our sites, free, on anything other than public Internet sites. Letting them share with colleagues, employees, and on Intranets, and in printed formats. With proper attribution, of course.
Also consider the repackaging of best material to produce free or paid e-books, and even print books. We're looking at this for later in the year and already doing some of it. Leverage Kindle formats. Get in the Apple shops. In the amazon shops.
That just a little bit of the stuff we're looking at, as a business that exists on the Internet only to meet the needs of our customers in non-Internet ways.
Be interested in comments, or what others are doing. I imagine, from what I've read that there will be some disagreement.
And, if my strategies don't work, I'll at least be able to wake up in the morning knowing I'm doing it my way and comfortable I'm not wasting my time trying to out-guess an algo I suspect nobody, including google, understands!
I was going to publish this on my own site, after polishing it up, but figure this is a better place.
