How could Penguin kill my top ten rank and promote this garbage page to a #5 spot
-
Hey,
Before penguin, I had a #9 rank for the term "yoga poses". So as many of us are doing, I started looking at my link profile... and yes, there were around 300 links from an old yoga news website (anchor: yoga poses)... that lead to the page on my site optimized for this term. The problem is they took the site down, but not properly... I.E. they generate a "not available" message for browsers, but underneath, I guess the bots can still index all the pages... so I guess they were interpreting these links as coming from a cloaked site.
So, I was able to get them to remove the links... webmaster tools reports half of them gone now.
What I don't get though... is how Google can give this garbage page a #5 spot for a competitive term like "yoga poses"...
Check out http://www.ebmyoga.com/beginyoga.html and compare it to
my page... http://www.yogaclassplan.com/yoga-poses/
This page leads to highly quality 100% unique yoga pose articles... in my mind we deliver so much more value than the site with a #5 rank.
I don't understand. Any insight?
Thanks,
-
That looks logical to me! Plus, from a usability standpoint, the reader can better understand how to navigate the content.
I do wonder if you should go a little larger on the images and have the category title, image and description all be the same width stacked one on top of the other. This is not for an SEO reason, but based on the preferences of the average yoga demographic. This arrangement would also (albeit slightly) increase readability of the description.
-
Thanks Cole,
I was thinking of editing the template like in the image attached below. Add text for each category and then thumbnails below that lead to the full article. What do you think?
-
I see that you do have fantastic content for each pose. That's great.
I would place an image for every pose on this page. Include a short description of that pose... and a link where visitor can get the full article.
When a visitor lands on this page they will be impressed with all of the poses and that you have additional information for each one.
I NEVER hesitate to show the visitor images of EVERYTHING that I have and then link to a more detailed page. I am not going to say the keywords that I have pages like this ranking for (with zero linkbuilding done by me) but you would probably be surprised at their difficulty. Huge image galleries linking to more detailed content are killler killer killer.
-
Hi Egol,
Thanks for your reply and it makes total sense... the problem for me is that if you look at the length of one of my pose articles, you will see there is no way I can post all this information on one page... so...
... I was thinking the following steps:
Please see wire frame attached:
1. Remove the right margin of this template to make it wider
2. Modify the header so that it speaks specifically to the pose articles... not the software
3. Insert say 150x150 images for each category of poses... I.E. arm balances etc... and then insert some text beside that image to further explain to the reader the type of poses they will find in this category.
4. Underneath this top level image and category text, I will insert thumb nail images and the pose name, which leads to the full article.
What do you think?
Thanks,
-
Connie,
For a living, I work with the health and wellness industries. Within that, about 75% of my clients are in the yoga world. I'm also a 200 hour Yoga Alliance certified yoga teacher. Not that those things help with SEO, but I have a unique understanding of the yoga world and lots of experience with, specifically, yoga-related websites.
I strongly recommend adding in images. Not stock photos, but images you take or produce yourself. They will need to be properly sized and tagged and all of that too, but from what I've seen with my clients, images really have a very positive impact. I know this is not true for all segments/industries, but in the yoga world—yes.
Not sure if you've seen yoga journal's pose finder index: http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/finder/browse_categories
YJ has invested a lot of money into the UX part of their site. Take note of what they are doing and see how you can improve.
Now, another benefit to the other site is that it's smaller, and simpler. Jamie Fernandez has the goods on 'why' for that as does ChangingHorizon.
Since you are using Wordpress (which is what we build all of our sites on) you need to get rid of any extra plugins you can possibly spare. Depending on what theme you are using, you may not need All in One SEO, however, I use this plugin on nearly all of our sites. Delete extra plugins.
Add pictures (even just 10 or 12) and see how that has an effect.
Also, you get points for your Sanskrit transliteration! Looks great. I've never seen your site before and am happy to have found it.
-
It may not look pretty, but your competitor has higher page authority, higher domain authority and an established domain. You also have a lot of scripts running on the page, including an 'All-in-One' SEO pack which means your page load speed is slow.
But I think EGOL really hits the nail on the head (as usual).
-
sometimes less is more and you might want to check your low domain authority links!
and remember Goggle does not care how the site looks it only cares for text and links.
You can learn from your competitors, do you want to!?
-
I whole-heartedly agree with EGOL. A few points to add:
- you may want to watch Rand's G+ Penguin Update video (11 minutes) https://plus.google.com/u/1/111294201325870406922/posts/MjLCYnwMdBB
The very first thing Rand shares is the Penguin update is NOT designed to immediately improve search results. It is designed to penalize sites which violated Google Guidelines.
- your site offers detailed pages on each individual yoga pose. Your competitor's site only offers a single yoga pose page as it is a much smaller site. Your competitor's site therefore provides more focus on this single page then your site offers.
I completely agree your site is higher quality overall. I would recommend adjusting your content to better match the main focus of the page.
-
Here are a few thoughts,
From a visitors point of view as it relates to someone looking for yoga poses..........
When landing on your competitions website, I see information about yoga poses, with descriptions and images. It shows me what I was looking for.
When visiting the url you provided for your site, right out of the gate, I see information about course outline development and no "yoga poses". I see a description saying "Designed Specifically for Yoga Teachers" So, I did not land on a page with the exact content I was looking for, so, I bounced.
I would consider developing some more yoga poses related content for the page.
-
Went to your page. Where are the poses??
I like the other guy's site because the pictures are right there. That's what I expected to find.
If I owned your site that page would have big photos for every pose right there and visible... generous descriptions will accompany each one. I would not expect people to click to them. People who arrive on a page like this want to see something. Give it to them is what I would do.
If you do that I bet your traffic will climb from long tail keywords and better ranking for your main term.
I would also cut back on spending the top 500 pixels of the page on design elements that are repeated across the site.
That's just opinion... but where I would bet my money.
(I have a page on a subject where I have lots of images - about the size of yours - each with a few sentence description. That page has about 60 images and 3000 words. It pulls in more traffic than an five pages on my site combined and is slowly climbing the SERPs for difficult terms. I do no linkbuilding. Pages with lots of images, big images and substantive text pull in links with no work from me.)
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
-
Does using non-https links (not pages) impact or penalise the website rankings?
Hi community, We have couple of pages where we we have given non-https (http) hyperlinks by mistake. They will redirect to http links anyway. Does using these http links on page hurt any rankings? Thansk
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking drop after image compression across website.
Hi all, Just checked my website in Google pagespeed insights and most of our website pages were required to reduce the images file size for better page loading. So I have compressed the images using https://compressor.io/ and https://tinypng.com/ and replaced the images. Then surprisingly ranking dropped even score improved for all pages with image optimisation. What would be the reason? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Not a mobile friendly website, will it hurt my rankings?
Unfortunately my website is not mobile friendly. As it is based on clickable links within an image there is no way to adapt it either. Now, I have heard Google is getting serious about mobile friendly design, how will this impact my ratings? My current analytics show 57% desktop, 24% mobile and 19% tablet. I really like the design of my site with the clickable images and would hate to have to change it because Google says so :-(. My website is http://tamarindobeachinfo.com
Algorithm Updates | | ijb0 -
Lots of dublicate titles and pages on search page
I own a paiting website with a lot of searchable paintings. The "search paintings" feature creates tons of dublicate pages and titles. See here:
Algorithm Updates | | KasperGJ
http://www.maleribasen.dk/soegmaleri.asp I guess the problem is, that the URL can actually be different and still return the same content. First time you click the "Search paintings" the URL will shown as above. But as soon as users
begin to definere they search to the left and use the "Search button" the top URL changes. So, depending on how the top URL looks different results are shown. This is pretty standard in searches. But it returns tons of dublicate pages and titles. How, do you guys cope with that? Is there a clever way to use ref="cannonical" or some other smart way to avoid this? /Kasper0 -
Ranking effected by Penguin 2.0
Hello Everyone, I am amazed to see that all the ranking of keywords got down after Penguin webspam algorithm updated on May 22, 2013. Is there any suggestion how we will recover and get the ranking back. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | lucidsoftech0 -
Top resulting sites sites for a specific keyword
I'm teaching myself SEO so that I can speak more intelligently to it with my clients. I've spent a great deal of time on seomoz and love it. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know and that brings me to my current question. I can search on a keyword and see results, however I see every URL available. I'm looking for a simple way to see the root domains for the top 100-500 resulting websites for a specific keyword. Is there an easy way to get this information I'm sure it's right in front of me, but I can't find it. Many thanks, ahossom
Algorithm Updates | | ahossom0 -
Google Places Rank Replacement
Hi Guys We have recentley done work for a client where they ended up position 1 for their chosen keyword, which was great. Since then there rank has changed and they are now first in google places rank but not on organic search at all, where as before they were on both? Any suggestions on why this may have happened? Not to sure at why google would have replaced the organic rank with the places rank? Cheers Chris
Algorithm Updates | | MiracleCreative0 -
Why have I lost rankings for my top 10+ keywords
Hello, As of 04/24/11 I have lost rankings for my top 10+ keywords in an extremely competitive market. I was ranking on page 1 in Google for keywords like: iphone app reviews, ipad app reviews, iphone app videos, ipad app videos, and more. Since 04/24 I have fallen off the first 10 pages + in Google for all major keyword & keyword terms. I have identified that I have 1,359 articles from prmac, which contain links to customers who published press releases through prmac. We are in the process of removing these pages, but creating a list of urls to prove to Google the possibly offending blog posts are gone. Beyond that I am not sure what else to do, please help. URL: http://www.crazymikesapps.com. thank you Mike
Algorithm Updates | | crazymikesapps0