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 an EAT score on my YMYL site impact my rankings?
I've read some conflicting information on YMYL and EAT. If the Google Quality Raters are out there reviewing YMYL pages and scoring them on EAT, does that site's score have an impact on that page's/site's ranking?
Algorithm Updates | | BFMichael0 -
Linking from high ranking sub domain pages to less ranking main domain pages to benefit latter
Hi all, We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Would having links on wikipedia help search engine rankings?
I am wondering that having a listing on Wikipedia would help search engine rankings in general? I know all of the Wikipedia links are no-follow links but I think it'd still help to rank higher on search engines. What are your thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul1 -
Google panda, penguin or Patience needed?
Dear friends, On 3rd of May, i suffered a Manual google unnatural outbound link penalty. I recovered from the said penalty on 27th of June. However, i have noticed that my traffic has been dropping since 23rd April. I am confused where to target my work. Should i work on thin content and is it an algorithmic Panda problem (but my keywords are still ranking good) or is it a Penguin problem (I had 6 domains with payday loans backlinks and i have dosavowed 32 backlinks recently) What should be my plan of action here and what would you recommend? An image is attached herewith for your reference, PHd8BzX.png
Algorithm Updates | | marketing911 -
Ranking Well in Google But Not Bing - Why?
Hello Moz Community, I'm ranking well in Google (#2-#6 for various keywords) but on the second page of Bing. Are there certain differences that I should be aware of? Thanks, Cole
Algorithm Updates | | ColeLusby0 -
MOZ.com Page Rank of 2?
I don't recall the page rank of SEOMoz.com prior to the company's change to MOZ.com. But did notice that MOZ.com currently has a Page Rank of 2 (which I find weird since it's such a strong, content rich, highly-regarded site). I'd be interested in hearing about findings from the MOZ.com team on why the low PR and how has it affected your site since the change? (...and perhaps a look at the future through a crystal ball 🙂 I recall reading the MOZ domain changing article titled "Domain Migrations: Surviving the "Perfect Storm" of Site Changes" which had great info and addresses some reasons for PR loss in the 'Traffic and Ranking Loss' section: http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons
Algorithm Updates | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Rankings Gone? Have I been effected by the Panda/Penguin Update(s)?
Our site www.alphameasure.com has been online since 2005 and currently has a page rank of 4. The site has always ranked on page one or two of Google for our primary keywords (Employee Satisfaction Survey, Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Surveys). I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but now our site is nowhere to be found. I'm thinking our ranking dropped somewhere in mid to late January? We did use an SEO company in the spring of 2012 that went on a link building campaign for us. They added about 450 inbound links over a three month period. Other than that - nothing has really change on the site. We're getting ready to release a new version of our software that was being re-written during all of 2012, so the timing of losing our rankings is just awful. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance,
Algorithm Updates | | EngagedMetrics
Josh0 -
Panda / Penguin Behavior ? Recovery?
Our site took a major fall on March 23rd, ie Panda 3.4 and then another smaller one on April 24th, ie Penguin. I have posted a few times in here trying get help on what items to focus on. Been doing this for 13 years, white hat, never chased algos but of course learned as I went. As soon as the fall hit one expert said it was links, which I kinda doubted because we never went after them but we have some but only a handful in comparison to really good authorative links. I concentrated on cleaning up duplicate content due to tags in a blog that only had 7 posts (an add on section to the site) then focuses efforts on just going through and making content better. Had other overlapping content that I would guess would pass inspection but I cleaned it up. After 6 weeks no movement back up, another expert here said yes, he saw some bad links so I should check it out. So back to focusing on links, I actually run a report and discover questionable links, and successfully get about 25 removed. Low numbers but we have only about 50 that were questionable. No contact info on the other directories so I guess we are stuck. Here is where I just go in circles... When our site fell on March 23rd we had 13 of our main pages still ranking at number 1 and 2 on each keyword phrase. Penguin hit and they fell about 10 spots. EXCEPT, one... This one keyword phrase and page stayed on top and ranked at #1 throught he storm. (finally fell to #4 but still remains up there). The whole site is down 90%, we only have 3 fair keyword phrases really ranking out of 250. The mystery is that the keyword phrase that was ranking was the one that supposedly had way over the % of anchor text, 7% of our links go to that page. The other pages that fell on Penguin had no pages linking back. I have been adding blog posts to our site, I post one an in a few days it gets indexed, have one of those ranking at #2 for the keyword, moved up from #4 a week after posting it in the blog. (google searches shows 80K) Just seems like the site should bounce back if new content is able to rank, why not the old? Did other people hit by Panda and Penguin see a sitewide fall or are they still ranking for some terms? I would love to see some discusson on success stories of bouncing back after Panda and Penguin. I see the WP success story but that was pretty sudden after it was brought to Google's attention. Looking for that small business that fixed something and saw improvement. Give me hope here please.
Algorithm Updates | | Force70