Panda Prevention Plan (PPP)
-
Hi SEOMOzers,
I'm planning to prepare Panda deployment, by creating a check-list from thinks to do in SEO to prevent mass trafic pert.
I would like to spread these ideas with SEOMoz community and SEOMoz staff in order to build help ressources for other marketers.
Here are some ideas for content website :
- the main one is to block duplicate content (robots.txt, noindex tag, according to the different canonical case)
- same issue on very low quality content (questions / answers, forums), by inserting canonical redirect or noindex on threads with few answers
-
Thanks for your help.
Big content website, as official they are, are always on prey from another panda tweak. Google send this panda message to prepare website using too much UGC, forums to make the difference between their official high quality content, and the SEO content on the way to become official.
That was the reason I need to build up a Panda Prevention Plan
-
Prepare original, high quality content and claim it with rel="author".
-
Personally, I don't think Panda is something that is ever going to happen again. There are always going to be algo tweaks, but this was something different.
I think it's always wise to block duplicate content and improve the quality of your content, but then this is just good practice all around!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Panda, rankings and other non-sense issues
Hello everyone I have a problem here. My website has been hit by Panda several times in the past, the first time back in 2011 (first Panda ever) and then another couple of times since then, and, lastly, the last June 2016 (either Panda or Phantom, not clear yet). In other words, it looks like my website is very prone to "quality" updates by big G: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Still trying to understand how to get rid of Panda related issues once for all after so many years of tweaking and cleaning my website of possible duplicate or thin content (301 redirects, noindexed pages, canonicals, etc), and I have tried everything, believe me. You name it. We recovered several times though, but once in a while, we are still hit by that damn animal. It really looks like we are in the so called "grey" area of Panda, where we are "randomly" hit by it once in a while. Interestingly enough, some of our competitors live joyful lives, at the top of the rankings, without caring at all about Panda and such, and I can't really make a sense of it. Take for example this competitors of ours: http://8notes.com They have a much smaller catalog than ours, worse quality of offered music, thousands of duplicate pages, ads everywhere, and yet... they are able to rank 1st on the 1st page of Google for most of our keywords. And for most, I mean, 99.99% of them. Take for example "violin sheet music", "piano sheet music", "classical sheet music", "free sheet music", etc... they are always first. As I said, they have a much smaller website than ours, with a much smaller offering than ours, their content quality is questionable (not cured by professional musicians, and highly sloppy done content as well as design), and yet they have over 480,000 pages indexed on Google, mostly duplicate pages. They don't care about canonicals to avoid duplicate content, 301s, noindex, robot tags, etc, nor to add text or user reviews to avoid "thin content" penalties... they really don't care about anything of that, and yet, they rank 1st. So... to all the experts out there, my question is: Why's that? What's the sense or the logic beyond that? And please, don't tell me they have a stronger domain authority, linking root domains, etc. because according to the duplicate and thin issues I see on that site, nothing can justify their positions in my opinion and, mostly, I can't find a reason why we instead are so much penalized by Panda and such kind of "quality" updates when they are released, whereas websites like that one (8notes.com) rank 1st making fun of all the mighty Panda all year around. Thoughts???!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Are Incorrectly Set Up URL Rewrites a Possible Cause of Panda
On a .NET site, there was a url rewrite done about 2 years ago. From a visitor's perspective, it seems to be fine as the urls look clean. But, Webmaster tools reports 500 errors from time to time showing /modules/categories... and /modules/products.... which are templates and how the original urls were structured. While the developer made it look clean, I am concerned that he could have set it up incorrectly. He acknowledged that IIS 7 on a Windows server allows url rewrites to be set up, but the site was done in another way that forces the urls to change to their product name. So, he has believed it to be okay. However, the site dropped significantly in its ranking in July 2013 which appears to be a Panda penalty. In trying to figure out if this could be a factor in why the site has suffered, I would like to know other webmasters opinions. We have already killed many pages, removed 2/3 of the index that Google had, and are trying to understand what else it could be. Also, in doing a header check, I see that it shows the /modules/products... page return a 301 status. I assume that this is okay, but wanted to see what others had to say about this. When I look at the source code of a product page, I see a reference to the /modules/products... I'm not sure if any of this pertains, but wanted to mention in case you have insight. I hope to get good feedback and direction from SEOs and technical folks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Is this Panda?
Hi, I have a page that has been fluctuating a lot the last few days, here are the results: 5/14: #17 (this is where it had been ranking for about 2 months). 5/15: #34 5/16: #33 5/18: #9 5/19: #35 5/20: #13 5/21: #37 I have only made minor changes to the page, and the link profile seems to look good. Here's the page: www.thesandiegocriminallawyer.com/dui.html (targeted KW: San Diego DUI Lawyer, San Diego DUI Attorney). The page has a lot of high-quality, original, and well-cited content. Any thoughts on what could be causing so much back and forth? I should state that none of the other rankings for this site (overall) have been impacted. Just this page for DUI related searches (San Diego DUI Lawyer, San Diego DUI attorney, San Diego Drunk Driving Lawyer, etc.).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Fastest Way To Remove Footer Link? (post-Panda)
Hello, I have a website with 1k+ links pointed directly to an inner page and home page from blogspot domains. There are 3 links in the footer that points to different locations. 1st anchor text points to the person who designed the page template and links to their website (this doesn't affect us) 2nd anchor text uses a direct keyword that I am trying to rank for and links to the inner page. 3rd anchor text uses my website name and links to the home page I know that these are not good links and the content inside the pages are irrelevant to my own website. The links are embedded into the template on the footer and is site wide.I have already contacted the designer and have the links removed but those that have downloaded the templates still have the footer link. What would be the best way to remove all these footer links? Trying to contact each individual person who is using the template is not working out as most have not responded and some of the websites have not seen an update in years! Any thoughts? If you need additional information feel free to send me a direct message so I can send you an exact link.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Panda 3.7 recovery?
In June '12 we got a bunch of our keyword rankings wacked by Panda 3.7 and haven't recovered. This is really frustrating since we had been hit by the original Panda and spent months fixing our site so that we had recovered in December '11. I've read what I can find about this update to see if there is something specific about it that would have knocked us down again and can't find anything. Does anyone know of any specific issues that this update supposedly "fixed"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
Panda/Penguin & Ecommerce Sites in similar niches
Hello, We have a few online stores that are in similar niches. How do we make sure that we don't get penalized for this (Panda/Penguin) We have the sites interlinked, but our newest one is not going to be linked to the others. Also, will rewriting descriptions help if the product is on more than one site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Can PDF be seen as duplicate content? If so, how to prevent it?
I see no reason why PDF couldn't be considered duplicate content but I haven't seen any threads about it. We publish loads of product documentation provided by manufacturers as well as White Papers and Case Studies. These give our customers and prospects a better idea off our solutions and help them along their buying process. However, I'm not sure if it would be better to make them non-indexable to prevent duplicate content issues. Clearly we would prefer a solutions where we benefit from to keywords in the documents. Any one has insight on how to deal with PDF provided by third parties? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gestisoft-Qc1 -
Has Panda 2.5 Hit?
I'm sure a few people have been asking this direct question throughout the forums but most of them are masked by indirect questions like "my traffic has dipped" and the like. Does anyone have a firm confirmation that Panda has hit? My indication that it has hit is that I'm experiencing a ~%30 increase in traffic to my e-commerce client from organic searches after this past weekend. We haven't made any significant changes to content besides daily postings, but even that doesn't account for a %30 spike that has maintained for 3 days straight. So again, what have you guys experienced? Anything to support this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | linztm0