Panda penalty removal advice
-
Hi everyone! I'm after a second (or third, or fourth!) opinion here!
I'm working on the website www.workingvoices.com that has a Panda penalty dating from the late March 2012 update. I have made a number of changes to remove potential Panda issues but haven't seen any rankings movement in the last 7 weeks and was wondering if I've missed something...
The main issues I identified and fixed were:
- Keyword stuffed near duplicate title tags - fixed with relevant unique title tags
- Copies of the website on other domains creating duplicate content issues - fixed by taking these offline
- Thin content - fixed by adding content to some pages, and noindexing other thin/tag/category pages.
Any thoughts on other areas of the site that might still be setting off the mighty Panda are appreciated!
Cheers
Damon.
-
Our site was scraped by a past empoyee who started up a competing buisness with our inside trade secrets, client list and designs. As they launched they immediately tried to put us out of buisness by:
A. hired hacks to hook us up with tons of spammy links along with a high mix of porn and virus injections sites.
B. hired hacks from the same cesspool and had them submit our images to same bad types of sites that would take the customer somewhere else
C. signed up email address to our newseltter so that when we sent out an email it would initiate a chain reaction to zombie computers and launch a DDOS attack on our site and make our own email campaigns stop sales and trash the confidence in the rest of the customers on the mailing list.
D. Gave out every know email address in our company to spammers, to the point of making it difficult to get or send emails to customers.
E. Submitted our phone number to every robot call and junk call site possible tieing up our phones and filling our voice mail."Regarding Panda timing- the site took the big hit three years ago." We to had this exact timing happen to us on top of everything else because we were too busy defending ourselves to keep up with the Google changes.
Regardless of all the horrifying past events, we have completely rebuilt the business from the inside out and migrated to a BigCommerce website from our custom site, plus added 5 social media platforms. BUT..."having to wait for Google" to reindex and give us another chance is killing us and we are concern that we may never get back in the good graces of this SE titian.
All though we have survived the battle, we still may loose the war! Even with continuing efforts to optimize our site to death and with only a fraction of the traffic, orders and income, we have to wonder:
A. What else is wrong such as trying to determine if there are duplicate content on sites out their we are unaware of.
B. Seriously considering dumping our domain (owned since 2000) and going to a new domain that would have to be reindexed and treated as fresh, hopefully optimzed content per the Google requirements, and take our chances.Input on considerations of A & B would be appreciated as we are pretty worn out after 3 years working at this.
-
In this case it was easy as they had created the duplicate domains themselves and they had control over them, so it was just a case of getting them taken down.
-
How did you find ..."opies of the website on other domains creating duplicate content issues"?
How did you ..."- fixed by taking these offline"?
We have been dealing with the same issues but did not think of the above and would like to find out if we have the same "duplicate" issues.
-
Yes, we do have Bing Webmaster Tools set up - I agree, even through Bing is limited in terms of traffic volume, Bing Webmaster Tools does give a slightly different take on things compared to Search Console.
Damon.
-
I'm also curious to know whether you've monitored Bing/Yahoo value over the course of your work. While it's rarely anywhere near Google's potential volume, I've seen good value gained from those as clients have implemented recommendations, even when Panda was a prime issue (and the subsequent panda refresh was a problem).
Overall it does sound like you're on the right track though.
-
Hello again Alan!
Agree with you 100% that this is a ongoing process. I asked the question with regards to getting the new hosting set up asap - if it wasn't going to be taken into account for the latest Panda update we would have a little more time.
As you say, having to wait for Google for almost a year to rerun Panda is really difficult for everyone (not just us). It's a really pity that we didn't pick this up earlier when Panda was running more regularly.
I've just run another crawl and we have 79x 30* redirects and 26x 40* pages, most of which are thumbnail jpgs and category pages (which are noindexed anyway). As stated above, I'll get these fixed this week.
We completed a competitor content analysis and redeveloped our main landing pages around this, and, together with our backlink profile, we think we've got a good chance of hitting the top ten SERP results - we are targeting some quite specific keywords with not particularly strong competition and have gained some excellent backlinks over the last few months.
Once again, thanks for your insight and help!
Damon.
-
Regarding 404/301 issues. The numbers I gave were for a small partial crawl of a hundred URLs. So a full Screaming Frog crawl would help to determine if it's worse. Even if its not, think of the concept where a site might have a dozen core problems, and twenty problems that by themselves might seem insignificant. At a certain point, something becomes the straw that breaks the camels back.
Regarding content - how many courses offered are actually up against competitors that have entire sections devoted to the topic just a single course page has on that site? How many have entire sites devoted to that? Understanding content depth requires understanding the scale of real and perceived competition. And if it's a course page, it may not be a "main" landing page, yet it's important in its own right.
Regarding panda timing - the site took the big hit three years ago. Waiting for, and hoping that the next update is the one that will magically reflect whatever you've done to that point isn't, in my experience, a wise perspective.
While it's true that once Google has locked a data set to then be applied to a specific algorithmic update, not taking action at a high enough level, and with enough consistency is gambling. Since true best practices marketing as a whole needs to be ongoing, efforts to strengthen on-site signals and signal relationships also needs to be ongoing. Because even if Panda weren't a factor, the competitive landscape is ever marching forward.
-
Hi Alan
Thanks for your comprehensive response - you make some very good points.
1. Host: The client is currently changing host as the current host is very entry level and we were aware that we had a problem - having said that the response times are a lot slower than when I last looked so we'll get in touch with the current host to see what they can do now.
2. 404/301 pages: Again these are on the list for the team to pick up on. I didn't actually think that there were enough to cause a problem - I can imagine if there were hundreds we might have an issue, but I would have thought 20 or so would have been OK? I'll chase to get these fixed in any case.
3. Content: I guess this is the gray area between a page not ranking due to poor page quality and a website being "algorthmically adjusted" because of poor page quality. We've worked on all our main landing pages to make them more comprehensive and from the research we have done we felt that we had done enough. We did consider noindexing the blog as well, but felt that as it was unique, while not particulary comprehensive, it shouldn't causing any Panda problems.
Quick question - is it your experience that once Panda starts running it is to late to make changes to your website? I've read that it is in a few places, but not in others places. I guess when it was running monthly it wasn't such an issue.
Once again, thank you very much for having a look - it's great to get a fresh set of eyes on the site.
Best
Damon.
-
Damon,
To start, let's be clear - Panda isn't a "penalty" - it's an algorithmic adjustment based on quality, uniqueness, relevance and trust signals.
Having audited many sites hit by the range of Panda updates, I have a pretty good understanding of what it usually takes. so having said that, I took a quick look at the site. While Andy may be correct in that you may only need to wait and hope the next or some future Panda update acknowledges the changes you've made to this point, that very well may not be enough.
1st obvious problem - your site's response times are toxic. - a crawl using Screaming Frog shows many of the pages have a response time of between 3 and 7 seconds. That's a major red flag - response times are the amount of time it takes to get to each URL. If it takes more than 2 seconds, that's typically an indicator that crawl efficiency is very weak. Crawl efficiency is a cornerstone of Panda because it reflects what is almost certainly a larger overall page processing time problem. Since Google sets a standard "ideal" page processing time of between one and three seconds, if it takes more than that just to ping the URL, the total processing time is likely going to be significantly worse.
While it's not required to always get a one to three second total process time, if too many pages are too slow across enough connection types for your visitors, that will definitely harm your site from a quality perspective.
And if too many pages have severely slow response times, Google will often abandon site crawl, which is another problem.
Next, I checked Google Page Speed Insights. Your home page scored a dismal 68 out of a possible 100 points for desktop users (85 is generally considered a good passing grade). That reinforces my concern about crawl inefficiency and poor page processing. It was even worse for mobile - scoring only 53 out of 100 points. In my second test, I got 63/100 for desktop and 49 for mobile. The different results for the two tests is due to the fact that speeds are worse at different times than others.
Just one of the issues GPSI lists is server response time (which confirms the very poor response times I saw in Screaming Frog).
Next, a partial crawl using Screaming Frog crawled 20 URLs that resulted in 404 (not found) status, which means you have internal links on your site pointing to dead ends - another quality hit. And SF found 25 internal URLs that redirect via 301 - further reinforcing crawl inefficiency. Since this was a partial crawl, those problems could be even bigger scaled across the site.
Then I poked around the site itself. http://www.workingvoices.com/courses/presentation-skills-training/keynote-speaker/ is indexed in google, as it's one of your courses. That page is possibly problematic due to the fact that there is hardly any content on that page overall. So while you may think you've dealt with thin content already, I don't think you fully grasp the need for strong, robust depth of content specific to each topic you consider important.
That's nowhere near a full audit, however the above are all examples of issues that absolutely relate to working toward a highly trusted site from Google's algorithmic perspective.
-
Hi
It looks like you have done everything correct, but you might have to wait for the next big Panda update before you start seeing any movements.
Thanks
Andy
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
-
To remove or not remove a redirected page from index
We have a promotion landing page which earned some valuable inbound links. Now that the promotion is over, we have redirected this page to a current "evergreen" page. But in the search results page on Google, the original promotion landing page is still showing as a top result. When clicked, it properly redirects to the newer evergreen page. But, it's a bit problematic for the original promo page to show in the search results because the snippet mentions specifics of the promo which is no longer active. So, I'm wondering what would be the net impact of using the "removal request " tool for the original page in GSC. If we don't use that tool, what kind of timing might we expect before the original page drops out of the results in favor of the new redirected page? And if we do use the removal tool on the original page, will that negate what we are attempting to do by redirecting to the new page, with regard to preserving inbound link equity?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoelevated0 -
Internal page links and possible penalties
If one looks at a page on our client's website, (http://truthbook.com/urantia-book/paper-98-the-melchizedek-teachings-in-the-occident for example), there are a huge amount of links in the body of the page. All internal links are normal links. All external links arerel="nofollow" class="externallink" We have two questions: 1. Could we be being penalized by google for having too many links on these pages? Will this show i our webmaster reports? 2. If we are being penalized, can we keep the links (and have no penalty) if we made the internal links rel="nofollow" class="externallink" as well? We need these internal links to help people use these pages as an educational tool. This is why these pages also have audio and imagery. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jimmyzig0 -
Google Manual Penalty - Unnatural Links
Hi, We are in the process of trying to remove a partial manual penalty for unnatural links. I would like to do a complete link audit of our site, where can I get complete data on sites linking to my website? Webmaster tools only appears to show the top 1000 domains. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
An Unfair Content related penalty :(
Hi Guys, Google.com.au
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarrodb
website: http://partysuppliesnow.com.au/ We had a massive drop in search queries in WMT around the 11th of september this year, I investigated and it seemed as though there were no updates around this time. Our site is only receiving branded search now - and after investigating i am led to believe that Google has mistakingly affected our website in the panda algorithm. There are no manual penalties applies on this site as confirmed by WMT. Our product descriptions are pretty much all unique but i have noticed that when typing a portion of text from these pages into google search using quotation marks, shopping affiliate sites which we use are being displayed first and our page no where to be seen or last in the results. This leads me to believe that Google thinks we have scraped the content from these sites when in actual fact they have from us. We also have G+ authorship setup. Typing a products full name into Google (tried a handful) our site is not in the top 100 or 200 at times, i think this further clarifies that we are penalised. We would really appreciate some opinions on this. Any course of actions would be great. We don't particularly want to invest in writing content again. From our point of view it looks like Google is stopping our site from ranking because it's getting mixed up with who the originator for our content is. Thanks and really appreciate it.0 -
Unnatural Links From My Site Penalty - Where, exactly?
So I was just surprised by officially being one of the very few to be hit with the manual penalty from Google "unnatural links from your site." We run a clean ship or try to. Of all the possible penalties, this is the one most unlikely by far to occur. Well, it explains some issues we've had that have been impossible to overcome. We don't have a link exchange. Our entire directory has been deindexed from Google for almost 2 years because of Panda/Penguin - just to be 100% sure this didn't happen. We removed even links that went even to my own personal websites - which were a literal handful. We have 3 partners - who have nofollow links and are listed on a single page. So I'm wondering... does anyone have any reason to understand why we'd have this penalty and it would linger for such a long period of time? If you want to see strange things, try to look up our page rank on virtually any page, especially in the /gui de/ directory. Now the bizarre results of many months make sense. Hopefully one of my fellow SEOs with a fresh pair of eyes can take a look at this one. http://legal.nu/kc68
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoagnostic0 -
Moving Part of a Website to a Subdomain to Remove Panda Penalty?
I have lots of news on my website and unlike other types of content, news posts quickly become obsolete and get a high bounce rate. I have reasons to think that the news on my website might be partly responsible for a Panda penalty so I'm not sure. There are over 400 news posts on the blog from the last 4 years so that's still a lot of content. I was thinking of isolating the news articles on a subdomain (news.mywebsite.com) If the news play a part in the Panda penalty, would that remove it from the main domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Does 301 redirect to a new domain removes penguin penality
Hi, One of my client has shady link profile and has hit by penguin update. I have confirmed the penalty using Google hack. Now, seeing his link profile, most of his links comes from blog comments which are from unmoderated blogs, and there is no way, we cant remove those comments. But without removing them, we cant get rid of the Google's penguin penality. So, i am planning on 301 redirecting to a new domain. But my question is, will the penality transfers, if i 301 to a new domain? What iff, if someone buys an old domain hit by a penguin update? Please clarify me, or if there are any alternatives to get rid of penguin update, please help me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Indexxess0 -
Bing Penalty
I am working with a client who apparently has been penalized by Bing. The site has been around for many years and they are an industry leader in their field. The site was previously indexed and received a substantial amount of traffic from Bing. Last week the site disappeared from Bing's index. A site: and url: search both show no results. Does anyone have a significant amount of knowledge or experience related to Bing penalties? Here is what I have done so far: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2009/03/19/getting-out-of-the-penalty-box.aspx This 2009 article states Bing's Summary Tool offers a "Site Status" section with a "Blocked" indicator which informs webmasters if a site is penalized. I have seen it before a long time ago, but apparently the field no longer exists. Is there a definitive means of determining if Bing has manually penalized a site besides a response from their Content Inclusion Request? Danny Sullivan wrote a great article about how Bing removed some sites for thin content last month. It seems two of the sites which were a focus of the article have been re-included in Bing's index. Bing claims an algorithm change where Danny seems skeptical. Either way this could be the same issue. http://searchengineland.com/bing-bans-holiday-deals-sites-102856 there are two recent complaints on Bing's forums about a similar issue where various webmasters shared their sites have been removed. There are no responses to these posts from Bing: http://www.bing.com/community/webmaster/f/12252/p/670360/9665163.aspx#9665163 and http://www.bing.com/community/webmaster/f/12252/t/670550.aspx?PageIndex=1 (the comments are relevant but not the initial post). Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0