Payday Loan or Panda? Any thoughts?
-
So this is a very old problem, but I'm finally getting around to trying to figure it out. My site experienced a dramatic organic traffic drop from Google (-40%) on May 17th 2014. It then drops another 30% on May 19th 2014. See graphs. According to Moz these two dates correlate with Payday Loan 2.0 and Panda 4.0.
Panda makes complete sense, as this site (www.ausedcar.com) has a large amount of content that is syndicated across other sites (used car inventory is essentially the same everywhere on the Internet). Payday Loan on the other hand, which seems to be the primary traffic drop doesn't make any sense at all. Is it possible I started getting hit by Panda on the 17th and then it completed on the 19th? I know the dates for algorithm changes are not perfect.
Next, assuming it is Panda, what are some things you guys have done to help with this? As I mentioned this content is duplicated all over the Internet, so it seems like Google arbitrarily picks winners and losers (my site is twenty years old!). I know I need unique content, but not sure how exactly to do that besides rewriting words so it doesn't appear duplicate.
-
Oh no!! So sorry to hear that Phil & sorry for the "loan" mix up. There are some great
There are some great disavow tools available. Here's a great resource to start: https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool
Cleaning up those spammy backlinks will help a lot.
Best of luck!
-
Actually I just Googled backlink audit, and holy hell, what a find! Someone was definitely deliberately attacking me with negative SEO (looks like a bunch of hacked wordpress sites pointing at us with various keywords). Thank you for the idea!
-
Thank you Britney, just to be clear my site isn't about loans at all, it just showed a traffic drop when Google's "Pay Day Loan" algo went live.
-
Thank you for responding, what specifically would the back link audit entail, do you have a good resource that discusses this? Google hasn't marked me for any bad links, but the site has been around so long I'm sure some directories and things we were in back in the day which were considered white hat are now black hat etc...
-
Yes, definitely duplicate content could be your problem. I would also recommend you do a back link audit.
Also the main page content looks quite sparse (sorry, I know it property took you ages. But it's worthwhile beefing it out, if you've got a few minutes spare).
Strongly recommend you do a full site audit from the ground up and include both on and off page.
-
Hi Phil,
It would 100% be worth it to rewrite some of your content and add unique value adds (graphics, video, audio, etc.) to help round out the page, better fulfill your user intents and provide multiple consumption options for your visitors. Google also loves to see old pages updated and improved. It would also be interesting to test this out on one of your payday loan pages to see what kind of organic traffic you can gain back through some on-site content improvements.
It would be interesting to test this out on one of your payday loan pages to see what kind of organic traffic you can gain back through some on-site content improvements. Bonus points for tapping into key influencers in the loan space to try to get some natural link love that could go a long way in re-indexing your content.
Sidenote: I just did a ton of keyword research for an upcoming blog post on keyword research. Looked into "loans", there is huge opportunity for "loan calculator" content. --Lots of volume, low competition.
Hope this helps,
B
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
-
Panda Cleanup - Removing Old Blog Posts, Let Them 404 or 301 to Main Blog Page?
tl;dr... Removing old blog posts that may be affected by Panda, should we let them 404 or 301 to the Blog? We have been managing a corporate blog since 2011. The content is OK but we've recently hired a new blogger who is doing an outstanding job, creating content that is very useful to site visitors and is just on a higher level than what we've had previously. The old posts mostly have no comments and don't get much user engagement. I know Google recommends creating great new content rather than removing old content due to Panda concerns but I'm confident we're doing the former and I still want to purge the old stuff that's not doing anyone any good. So let's just pretend we're being dinged by Panda for having a large amount of content that doesn't get much user engagement (not sure if that's actually the case, rankings remain good though we have been passed on a couple key rankings recently). I've gone through Analytics and noted any blog posts that have generated at least 1 lead or had at least 20 unique visits all time. I think that's a pretty low barrier and everything else really can be safely removed. So for the remaining posts (I'm guessing there are hundreds of them but haven't compiled the specific list yet), should we just let them 404 or do we 301 redirect them to the main blog page? The underlying question is, if our primary purpose is cleaning things up for Panda specifically, does placing a 301 make sense or would Google see those "low quality" pages being redirected to a new place and pass on some of that "low quality" signal to the new page? Is it better for that content just to go away completely (404)?
Technical SEO | | eBoost-Consulting0 -
Looking for live website examples of google adsense since panda update
Hi, i am looking for some live websites that use google adsense who have changed their layout since the panda update If anyone can please point me in the right direction so i can see good examples of how sites have now changed their google adsense layout so we can learn from this, then that would be great regards
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Rankings drop after Panda
Hi All, My site dropped completely out of the SERPS on September 27th. I've tried everything I know to do (re-wrote all content, disavow links tool, filed DCMA complaints, de-optimized on-page content, made anchor text less aggressive, etc). Can you all please take a look at www.doctorloanusa.com and let me know what you think the problem is and how much you'd charge to help? Keywords used to be: doctor loans, physician loans. I ranked 2 or 3 for those keywords consistently for over 4 years. I know I need more content, but I feel like it's a waste of time creating it. If a thin site was the issue, wouldn't I at least rank SOMEWHERE in the 1000 results? Thanks for your consideration. At my wits end.
Technical SEO | | Cary_Forest0 -
Old domain vs. New keyword domain - Thoughts?
Okay. I'd like to get opinions as to what everyone thinks about domains lately. Here is any example: The current domain is general in nature, in fact, it's a persons name because they are a real estate agent. So the domain is something like JohnDoe.com. Current stats: Has approx. 130 linking domains pointing to it. Has over 300 incoming links from these linking domains. The link profile is clean and not spammy (not to say there are not a few that might be here and there) Was bough in 1994 The new domain would have very little value except it would be keyword rich such as PortlandHomesForSale.com (just an example). What are your thoughts. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | JordanRussell0 -
What are your thoughts on Twylah and SEO?
I recently signed up for Twylah. If you are not familiar with it, Twylah creates a summary of all your tweets, which you can then add to your site to make them easily accessible for humans and for search engines. On first glance I am really liking this idea, however after adding Twylah to our site, our crawl diagnostics took a major spike in errors and alerts: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/90501/static/Diagnostics%20After%20Twylah.png Here is our Twylah page: http://tweets.hingeheads.com I am not a SEO expert, but the number of errors is worrying me. Are we getting penalized by Search Engines/Google because of the high number in errors/alerts? Curious to hear your thoughts. P.S. I have fwd this to the Twylah team. They will get back to me in the next few days.Diagnostics%20After%20Twylah.png
Technical SEO | | hingeheads0 -
Panda or Penquin -Website Fell - Shouldn't this Recover?
On March 23rd our site fell 47% in one day. www.TranslationSoftware4u.com but we still held quite a few #1 to #7 rankings on Google and thought it would just recover. Our top keyword "translation software" was #4 , now we are #19 Over the next week I waited to see if it recovered. We have been online 10+ years and always stayed with white hat. I admit to learning as I go over the years but always felt content was king so I focused on information. I really do not see my site as using spam techniques but maybe I am missing something on the way I have it. March 23rd, major drop -47% On April 2nd I started with SEO MOZ and the Research tools showed we had duplicate content warning. This was from a blog we were trying to start that only had 7 posts but it had about 20 tags per post. I did not realize that tags actually created that post under that tag. I went in and deleted the tags again being stupid and not realizing it was then making that come up 404. The blog was so small we do not get hits on it anyway so hoping it just clears itself up. ( still get duplicate warning on our directory due to using "php Link Directory", but it's due to how it reuses the title tag and description, 2 instances per category page"). Still trying to fix the php directory issue. Seems many others are running it and did not have a drop. April 24th, we dropped another -10% It keeps falling -70% now. I have gone through the site and tried to clean up any warnings like duplicate title tags, meta descriptions. With regards to links I put up a small web directory with some reciprocal linking. Our product translates languages but software is not the same as a human so we often set clients up with human translators, the directory is a nice place to help our customers find a translator or see online tools that can help. The links were not excessive, there were maybe 100 links. After the fall I went in and found some translators had gone out of business so I deleted those, I am down to 65 links now, about 45 are exchanges. I have submitted to some online directories manually, but looking back through the links there is not really anything that makes me concerned. The link back to my site was really the most neglected SEO thing I did. Again concentrating on content. I did find a few links that I was not happy about but I did not put those links so had no control. I have been working on cleaning up my title tags, and making sure the content just reads better. I have been hoping that my site would just start recovering but it keeps sliding. Has anyone seen recovery from the updates. Should I see anything yet? I cannot seem to get Google to return to the site and reindex. Am I doing somethign spammy on my site and I do not realize it? Thanks for any advice in advance!
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
Panda and unnatural links caused ranking drop
Hi I have been approached to do some SEO work for a site that has been hit badly by the latest panda update 3.3, they have also had a warning in their Google webmaster tools account saying they had unnatural looking links to their site, they received this in 26 Feb and that prompted them to stop working with their excising seo company and look for a new one. Apparently their rankings for the keywords they were targeting have dropped dramatically, but it looks like just those they were actively building back links for, other phrases do not look affected. Before I take them on I want to be clear that it is possible to help them reclaim their rankings? I have checked the site and the on-page seo is good, the site build is good, just a few errors to fix but the links that have been built by the seo company are low quality with a lot of spun articles and the same anchor text so I see what the Google webmaster tools message is refuring to. I do not think these links can be removed as there is no contact details on the sites I checked I have not checked all of them but a random sample does not show promise, they are from low authority domains. So if I am to take them on as a client and help them to regain their previous rankings what is the best strategy? Obviously they want results yesterday and from our phone call they would rather someone else did the work than them, so my initial response of add some better quality content that others in your industry would link to as a reference did not go down well, to be fair I think it is a time issue there are only 3 people in the company and they are not technical at all. Thanks for your help Sean
Technical SEO | | ske110 -
Have I been mauled by the Panda?
I mentioned my problem a few nights ago, but since then I think I may have found my problem. I have a site that was never really promoted to any great level, but for the main keywords I could find it in serps with out clicking though too many pages. I came up first for the company name in both Bing or Google. Recently I finally decided to promote it and did a bit of a ranking check. First I still come up first for my company name in Bing, but in Google I come up 900+ out of 1000, virtually last. For my main keyword, the title of my site and optimized well for, I come up last, absolutely last. For long tail terms from my home page where I am the only site in the world to have the exact term, I come first in Bing, and absolutely last in Google. I don’t do black hat, but I thought I must be flagged by Google and I asked for reconsideration, they replied that no manual actions had been taken again the site, and referred me to the usual Google guidelines. It was very frustrating, I then had a thought, I had a long forgotten sub domain that had a load of duplicate content, it was a load of Microsoft documentation and other dev stuff from other sources, rss feeds and the like. Nothing sinister, but duplicate all the same. I am now thinking that this maybe my problem. I have 410’ed the whole sub domain as the site has not been maintained for some time anyhow. Does anybody know of simular, sub domain causing loss of ranking for root domain
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley0