Curious what risk we are for Panda 4.2 update
-
We are curious to know what the MOZ community thinks about our level of unique content on the following profile and if the community thinks we are currently at risk / susceptible for a Panda 4.2 Penalty. We have profiles on over 4,000 colleges (https://www.noodle.com/colleges/coUD/williams-college) some are more populated with content than others. We've already taken action to noindex several hundred thousand profile URLs (https://www.noodle.com/tutoring/tc2d9be/eye-level-center-of-tribeca) which currently publish less original content.
Curious how other major vertical search websites approach this problem (a la Glassdoor, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc)
As always - the feedback from this community is priceless!!
-
From my experience I could see this being a risk, but, it sounds like you are aware of the important factors to consider.
I'd want a good portion of unique content on any of those types of pages that is:
- Different from other places on the web
- Different form other pages on the site
I'd also focus on making sure the content is utilizing correct grammar, punctuation and reads well.
I'd think carefully about your plan for indexation and crawling based on how users actually search as well. URLs like this:
Don't seem like they'd be likely targets for searchers (I didn't check volume..just a guess that there isn't much volume there). Meaning, while this page is likely useful for someone once they hit the site, it seems like it's fairly long-tail and might pick up few searches. While that's not necessarily bad, it's easy to get a large chunk of dynamically generated pages out there that:
- Attract few (if any) organic searches
- Waste crawl budget
- Put you at risk for algo adjustments because they can start to have very similar content, show little user activity, etc.
While I haven't looked to see how some of the other big players in vertical search that you mentioned are handling this stuff, I do know that clients we've worked with in the past playing in these spaces have found benefit from carefully crafting architecture for users and bots to make sure the site aligns well with how people are actually searching and that that is the content available.
I would also wager a guess that Glassdoor and other big players are getting a lot of benefit because of their off-site signals (large link profiles, brand mentions, branded searches, good user signals, etc.). That would help them be seen as legitimate if there was question about their content.
Make sure you're providing good value for users that makes you the place to go, make sure you are building your brand signals, and make sure you have a strong plan that aligns your site with how users are actually searching.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?
Hello good people of the MOZ community, I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall. Some examples of the **old **URLS would be https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine. The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live. Is there a great SEO risk to doing this?
Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend.
Is there anything else I am missing? I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage. Thanks in advance,
Chris Gorski0 -
Recent drop in SERP from #1 to #2\.
Our #1 priority keyword, which we've ranked #1 for years, suddenly we're #2. And, the page listed above us doesn't seem to be even compete. Moz On-Page has us at an A and them at a C. When I review the html, I don't even seem any exactly keyword match or matching text on the page. I checked are ranking last week and didn't notice any change - so I've narrowed it down to something changing in the last 4-5 days. Also of note, when I test, We're #1 on mobile, #2 on desktop. Sorry to not list the url's. omitted intentionally. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FX4nWOO0 -
We haven been hit by penguin 2.0 what to do?
Hi, Last week we got hit bij penguin 2.0. Our sites dropped on most keywords on average 10 places. We had a steady place for 2 to 3 years. We have site-wide links in the top of our websites to the other websites ( about 9 e-commerce sites). Today i have put rel= "nofollow " tags in all these links (accept on the hompages). To prevent spammy links. Is there anything else we can do ? Url ww.klokkenpaleis.nl most important keyword = klokken ( previous position, 2nd place) search engine = google netherlands Thanks a lot for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GTGshops0 -
Old and New Google Places Address Update or Create?
Working on SEO for client who is at a new address. Luckily? there are no google reviews attached to the old addresses (there 2). Should I try to update one of the old ones? Or should I just go ahead and create a new listing? What are the pros and cons of each decision.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
What is next from Google Panda and Google Penguin?
Does anyone know what we can expect next from Google Panda/Penguin? We did prepare for this latest update and so far so good.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jjgonza0 -
What's the best way to hold newly purchased domains over 2 years?
Hi, A friend has just bought 3 domains and is not planning to build websites with them for around 2 years. He asked me what the best thing to do with these domains was...I have 2 ways of look ing at it: a) Putting a holding page on these and submit to Google Webmaster Tools - this way they are indexed by Google and hold search engine trust when the site finally goes up - HOWEVER, if they are not updated with fresh content would that work against them in 2 years time? b) Simply redirect them to their existing site and don't do anything else. Let me know your thoughts. Adido.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adido-1053990 -
Our site has been up almost 2 months and no rankings yet?
Our site is www.AkinsSeptic.com. We spent a lot of time on the site and have not received any rankings yet. Can you advise as to what we can do to get this site ranked at all. I know it needs a lot of SEO work and some links, however, it should rank mildly due to the low competition of keywords we are using. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormz0