Google Panda Two Years Later: 5 Questions With HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson

(Editor’s Note: This is the final article in a 3-part series looking at the aftermath of Google’s Panda algorithm update, which launched February 24, 2011. To catch up, please see the first two articles in the series: Google Panda Two Years Later: Losers Still Losing & One Real Recovery and Google Panda Two Years Later: The Real Impact Beyond Rankings & SEO Visibility.)
In the two years since Google rolled out the Panda update, many of the “losers” are still losing, and several others have been impacted beyond rankings and SEO.
HubPages.com fits both descriptions.

Launched in 2006, the site currently has about 130,000 authors that have published more than 1.1 million articles, or “hubs” as the site calls them. It was regularly listed as one of Panda’s bigger losers and CEO Paul Edmonson confirms that below when he says Panda “caused a massive loss of traffic and revenue.” But unlike at least some of the other sites that Panda hit hard, HubPages isn’t planning to change course; its focus is on improving quality. 

In the course of researching the first two articles in this series, I reached out to a couple companies that were hit by Panda (and were relatively easy to contact on a tight deadline). HubPages was the first company to respond; others said they were unable to answer questions due to timing, travel, and so forth. With that in mind, our 3-part series on Panda’s second anniversary ends with this email interview with HubPages CEO Paul Edmonson.

Good Bye Anchor Text, Welcome Co-Citations: Revolution in Link Building for 2013 Revealed

The Google Penguin update has changed the link building process forever. Gone are the days when it was easy to rank for desired keywords by building tons of links using exact keywords as the anchor text.

In the wake of Penguin, uncertain exactly where the thresholds and ratios are. Just how well distributed should our anchor text be in order to get the best results?

We have been busy with research on the subject and, not too long ago, discovered what Rand Fishkin at the SEOMoz blog had to say for their Whiteboard Friday series. Much of what we’ve observed has fallen in line with his predictions.

So why might Google think about diminishing Anchor text?