Please help me with your advice

[Webdeal]

Hi all,

Couple years ago I started to build my business based on EMD domain. The intention was to create the source with the rich unique content.

After a year of hard work the site achieved top 10 in Google and started to generate good amount of leads.

Then Google announced the EMD Update and site lost the 90% of traffic (after Pandas updates our SERP was steady )

“ a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don’t rise high in Google’s search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. ”

But I don’t consider my site low-quality site, every page, every post is 100% unique and has been created only to share the knowledge with others…

The site has EXCELLENT content from industry point of view....

Since the “ EMD Update “ I read hundreds , hundreds of different articles and opinions related to EMD update and finally I am confused and lost.

What should I do…

• Kill the site and start new one
• Get more links, but what type of links and how I should get them
• Keep hoping and pray....
• Or do something else

Please help me with your advice

[Webdeal]

Thank you...I will appreciate if you will give me 10 mins of your time....i sent site to your PM

[Dr-Pete]

I have a post on the subject here - it's very long, because it's a complex subject:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

We're not saying this is definitely the problem - just that you should be aware of how complicated it can get. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell without really looking at the site. A lot can happen to hurt a site's rankings, and the EMD update was just one piece of the puzzle.

[Webdeal]

But Panda...as far as know looking for duplicate content....and we are very careful with that for all our sites....Content is 100 unique and never been spinned, written by humans....

so i am confused more...

This is the article by M.Cutts I remeber i read it

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2214115/Google-Warns-of-Upcoming-Exact-Match-Domain-Algorithm-Change

date 3 october 2012....

after that day our site started to loose the trafic...not in 1 night but slowly..slowly...than
up to mid nov 2012 it lost about 65% ..this is why i have concluded from the begging that it was EMD

[MarieHaynes]

Ah!  I was thinking it was end of September because you said you were a casualty of EMD.  If this happened mid November then it's definitely not EMD.

There were Panda updates November 5 and November 21.  If the drop doesn't coincide with those dates then it is not due to a major algorithm change.  (By major I mean Panda/Penguin as Google is constantly tweaking the algorithm.)

[Webdeal]

all top 10 positions were dropped in mid of november 2012.
I said 90 % ...i think the statment has been exaggerated....but  65% for sure

[MarieHaynes]

The thing is that if you lost 90% of your traffic at the end of September (i.e. Sept 27/28) then the issue is very likely either EMD or Panda.  If you have a good site with 300 well written unique pages then in my mind EMD is almost impossible.  So, I would go investigating Panda issues. Duplicate and thin content are the top culprits but there can be other factors.

There are other possibilities though including a change in urls, DNS problems, hosting problems, malware issues, robots.txt problems, accidentally noindexing, a competitor ramping up their SEO etc. etc.

If the traffic drop was a little later, like October 5 then Penguin is a possibility.  Penguin is related to overoptimized anchor text in your backlinks among other things.

Sometimes when a site is affected on a Panda date but doesn't seem to have Panda issues it is possible that sites linking to your site were affected by Panda and as such you have lost some of your link juice.  But it is unlikely that 90% of your traffic would go because of this.

[Webdeal]

the site got only unique urls, by pages i meant urls too

[Webdeal]

I will appreciate if you will explain it bit more in details....

[Dr-Pete]

Keep in mind, too, that a lot of duplicate content is accidental. Google doesn't care about pages, per se - they care about unique URLs. So, if you have 300 unique pages, but something about your CMS translates that into 5,000 crawlable URLs, then you could definitely have problems.

[Webdeal]

I really appreciate your knowledge , but the site has nothing to do with Panda as it got 300 pages with unique and  well written content

[MarieHaynes]

The number of unique pages doesn't really matter when it comes to Panda.  You could have 300 unique pages, but if there are also 50 pages of copied content then this can trigger Panda.

But the other question I had was about thin content.  An example of thin content would be a page that has say, a product photo, a bunch of template text that is the same from page to page a few ads and then only 1 or 2 lines of text.

Another example of a thin page would be if you had a section of definitions and each one had its own page.  They could possibly be considered thin.

[Dr-Pete]

If this is really related to the EMD update, then I'd agree with Charles - starting over is a bad idea. My best guess is that the EMD update wasn't a penalty, per se - it was more like Google lowered the volume on EMDs. In other words, having one isn't bad now - it's just that it's not as good as it used to be. There's no way to fix that really (you can't turn the volume back up), but the risks of switching domains would probably far outweigh the benefits.

To back up Marie, though, a lot happened right around the EMD update, and it's really tough to diagnose. I'd definitely look at Panda factors, like "thin" content. Try to look at the site from Google's POV - what you view as unique doesn't matter, frankly. You could be spinning out URL-based duplicates, for example, and not realize it - that's more of a technical SEO issue (you're not doing anything devious, but the site may still be giving Google problems).

The other issue to consider is whether your EMD has caused you to really pile on exact-match anchor text, especially keyword-loaded anchor text. This could trigger Penguin or similar problems. This is often correlated with EMDs, even though it wouldn't necessarily be a result of the EMD update.

If they've really just turned down the "volume", then you have to get other ranking factors in play - build more relevant, authoritative links, increase your social signals, etc. In other words, focus on aspects of SEO beyond simple on-page ranking factors.

[Webdeal]

Hi Maire, thanks for your answer site got over 300 unique pages...

[MarieHaynes]

When EMD hit on September 28, I asked for people to send me domains that had been affected so that I could see if there were any patterns.  I had over 100 domains sent to me and the vast majority of them actually had Panda issues.  Then, a few days after EMD, Google announced that they had also done a Panda refresh on September 27.

In all of the domains that I analyzed I would say that one of them was likely a true EMD candidate.  This was a one page site with very little content and several affiliate links.  It previously was ranking well for a competitive niche.  The only reason it was ranking well was because of its domain name.  EMD was designed to take the ranking benefit away from sites that ONLY ranked because they had keywords in their domain name.  It doesn't punish a site simply because there are keywords in the domain name.

You've mentioned that your pages are 100% unique.  Do you have thin pages?  If you have a section of your site that has pages with very little content on the page then this can cause Panda to affect you.  But there are other possible reasons as well.

[Webdeal]

Thanks Charles for your time...