Need some urgent Panda advice. Open discussion about recovering from the Panda algorithm.
-
I have a site that has been affected by Panda, and I think I have finally found the problem.
When I created this site in the year 2006, I bought content without checking it. Recently, when I went through the site I found out that this content had many duplicates around the web. Not 100% exact, but close to.
The first thing I did is ask my best writer to rewrite these topics, as they are a must on my site. This is a very experienced writer, and she will make the categories and subpages outstanding.
Second thing I did was putting a NOINDEX, FOLLOW robots meta in place for the pages I determined being bad. They haven't been de-indexed yet.
Another thing I recently did is separate other languages and move these over to other domains (with 301's redirecting the old locations to the new.) This means that the site now has a /en/ directory in the URL which is no longer used.
With this in mind I was thinking to relocate the NEW content, and 301 the old (to preserve the juice for a while.) For example:
http://www.mysite.com/en/this-is-a-pandalized-page/
301 to
http://www.mysite.com/this-is-the-rewritten-page/
The benefits of doing this are:
-
decreasing the amounts of directories in the URL
-
getting rid of pages that are possibly causing trouble
-
getting fresh pages added to the site
Now, the advice I am looking for is basically this: Do you agree with the above? Or don't you agree? If you don't, please be so kind to include a reason with your answer. If you do, and have any additional information, or would like to discuss, please go ahead
Thanks,
Giorgio
PS: Is it proven that Panda is now a running update? Or is it still periodically executed?
-
-
The reason I know for a fact its Panda, is that the site lost its rankings (and thus about 60% of its traffic) end of February 2011.
Since then I managed to get slightly better rankings by adding loads of content and rewriting some categories (with thin pages, and not too many sub pages) from the bottom up, however, I never realized I had the content I currently located, which is terrible in terms of quality, and has duplicates all over the web. Like I said, this content dates back to 2006 when I didn't have a clue about SEO.
It's not that the content will be rewritten, based on what's there. I just told my writer to write about topic X and topic Y and make it very informative, so I will go from bad to really good pages.
Moving the new pages to new locations and getting rid of the others "infected" pages seems the best in my opinion, despite the age of these pages and the occasional link to them.
-
Panda still runs in installments, not continually. Rewriting content sounds like a massive task, hope it's worth it (e.g. is it better to write new stuff instead?). Have you got any pagination present on the site or indexable search results? We are under assumption here that you are certain that the problem is caused by Panda filter and not other factor and that your page layout and ads are not the cause of the drop or that the problem is not link related. I see no problem with 301 of pages with duplicate content to a new better content page. Sounds like something users might appreciate as well.
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
-
Need help with best practices on eliminating old thin content blogs.
We have about 100 really old blog posts that are nothing more than a short trip review w/ images. Consequently these pages are poor quality. Would best practices be to combine into one "review page" per trip, reducing from 100 to about 10 better pages and implement redirects? Or is having more pages better with less redirects? We only have about 700 pages total. Thanks for any input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KarenElaine0 -
Local SEO - Do I need it if I don't do business locally?
Super confused about this. Our office is located in Los Angeles, but it is not a storefront, and our clients are from all over the country... and our business involves travel to other countries. So there is nothing "local" about us. But everything I read seems to say we should be doing local SEO. How to approach this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benenjerry1 -
How many links would you need to rank up in page rank?
White hat **** Can 20 website with page rank of 3 make your site rank higher?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spidersite0 -
Approximate linking root domains we need based on these metrics
Our top 4 competitors for a single term we're targeting has the following metrics: PA 45, DA 89, 6 linking root domains to page, 40,000 linking root domains to domain PA 53, DA 100, 3 linking root domains to page, 1.6 million to domain PA 32 DA 37, 4 linking root domains to page, 200 to domain PA 55 DA 66, 6 linking root domains to page, 3300 to domain All other optimization is about the same, except in (2) they have half of the keyword phrase in the domain and the whole keyword phrase in the URL. Also everybody else has title and meta description with the plural form, and the singular is what I typed in. We have the whole keyword phrase in the domain. The above 4 sites were internal pages, ours is a home page rank. Our metrics: PA 33, DA 22, 30 linking root domains to page, 43 linking root domains to site How tough will it be for us to compete? How many strong linking root domains will it take?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Penguin Rescue! A lead has been hit and I need to save them!
I had a meeting today with a prospective client who has been hit by Penguin. Their previous SEO company has obviously used some questionable techniques which is great for me, bad for the client. Their leads have dropped from 10 per day to 1 or 2. Their analytics shows a drop after the 25th, a back link check shows a lot of low quality links. Domain metrics are pretty good and they are still ranking ok for some keywords. I have 1 month to turn it around for them. How do you wise people think it can be done? First of all I will check the on-site optimisation. I will ensure that the site isn't over optimised. Secondly, do I try and remove the bad links? Or just hit the site with good content and good links to outweigh the bad ones. Also, do you think G is actually dropping rankings for the over optimisation / bad links or are the links are just being discredited rsulting in the drop in rankings. 2 very different things. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpsonGareth0 -
3 Sites Covering Similar Topics & Panda
My question will take a bit of explaining, so here goes: I have 3 blogs on the same server: 1. personal finance blog; 2. credit card blog; 3. prepaid credit card blog. The personal finance blog is my flagship site started in 2007, which feeds my family and pays the mortgage. By contrast, the other two sites (started in 2008 and 2010) I would gladly kill if the result would help my personal finance blog. In the fall of 2010 (before Panda) the prepaid card blog was penalized by Google. This has been confirmed by Google in response to a reconsideration request. Of course, they don't say why. I've tried a number of things and resubmitted the site, but with no luck. Both the personal finance blog and credit card blog were hit by Panda 2 (April 11, 2011) and have not recovered. While the personal finance site covers many topics (e.g., investing, credit, debt, money management), its income comes largely from credit cards. We review individual credit cards and have pages that list cards by category (e.g., balance transfer, cash back, travel). The credit card blog does the same thing, but of course covers credit cards in more depth. There is a similar overlap between the prepaid card blog on the one hand, and the credit card blog and personal finance blog on the other. However, all content is unique. I do not currently link between the sites, although until a few months ago I had blogroll links between the sites and a few (less than 10) content links. If you've made it this far (and I hope you have), here are my questions: 1. Could the existence of the credit card and prepaid credit card sites be hurting my personal finance blog's rankings in Google, whether via Panda or otherwise? 2. If there is a reasonable chance that the answer to question 1 is yes, what would you suggest I do? Of course, I could just take down the sites, but I wonder if there are other options. One thought I had was to deindex the two card sites (I assume I can do this by disallowing googlebot via robots.txt) and give it time. Would Google treat this as if the sites did not exist? Both sites get a fair amount of traffic from bing and yahoo, so this option appeals to me. Of course, for all I know the existence of the two card sites are hurting my personal finance blog's rankings in bing and yahoo, too. I thought about selling the sites, but if they are hurting my personal finance site, I grow concerned about how google distinguishes between a site being sold and a webmaster just trying to make the sites look like they are owned by different people. In this regard, I've never tried to hide the common ownership of the sites and have no intention of doing that now. If I kill the sites, should I redirect them to my personal finance site? For the penalized prepaid card site, this seems both risky and unhelpful. But perhaps redirecting the credit card site is an option. Given that the personal finance site is my livelihood, I greatly appreciate your thoughts on my dilemma.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bergerlaw0 -
Canonical URL's - Do they need to be on the "pointed at" page?
My understanding is that they are only required on the "pointing pages" however I've recently heard otherwise.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DPSSeomonkey0 -
Google +one button - help needed
I have installed Google plus button on my homepage. My GA report is being displayed like this - 7 total events were recorded Total Events Unique Events 7 2 Event action Total Events on 4 off 3 My questions are - 1 ) Is someone clicking on Google plus button considered an Event ? 2 ) What is meant by 2 Unique Events 3 ) Why does GA report shows on 4 and off 3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050