We thought we would run through a quick list of what lessons we have learned from the latest Panda update based on the traffic of and from Article directories.
- Niche is king. By far the least affected article directories are the ones that occupy a strong niche. A look across the largest general article directories shows that they all lost close to 30% of their traffic in the last two months. Sites like Healthguideance. com were far less affected.
- Protecting outbound links is irrelevant. It used to be said that if you protect your outbound links, you protect your PR. But the latest changes in stats show that that does not matter. A quick comparison of the article directories that make outbound links “nofollow” shows they are in the same boat as the ones that allow any links.
- Protect the hell out of your content. It looks like some of the winners from the update were large publishers. This seems to be because, not only do they have unique content, it is also not available anywhere else. Scrapers and Farmers have damaged everyone. The graph above shows how the BBC and Mashable.com were relatively unscathed. Ezinearticles.com claim to have unique content, but it is clear that once approved, authors are syndicating out their work to other locations (intentionally or otherwise).