Panda and Large Web Presence
-
I'm experiencing some recent significant drops in rankings across the board for a client of mine and I suspect that it's probably related to Panda. Their internet presence features completely unique, useful, well written content by certified industry experts. Further, all content is of proper length and again serves a core purpose, providing helpful information to their viewers. Where I think things potentially go wrong is that they have around 20 micro sites in operation, including multiple web 2.0 blogs. There are also multiple sites in operation that target more specific areas of the same city. Again all of the content is unique, but they all feature content that's of the same industry and broad topic.
Despite everything being 100% unique, I fear it's too excessive. Anyone know if Panda may target this type of approach even if the quality and uniqueness is appropriate?
-
Panda updates have hit microsites where content across the sites was either duplicated or "thin", although thin is often in the eye of the beholder. Keep in mind, and I mean this kindly, that "unique" is not always high-quality, and the quest for technical uniqueness can lead to practices where microsites are just spinning out versions of content with slightly different keyword concepts or ordering, etc. In other words, it's technically "unique", but most people wouldn't view it as valuable.
Early Panda updates did hit certain kinds of spun-off content hard, including geo-located content. In other words, you spun out your plumbing services page for 5,000 cities and it only differed by city names and a few basic facts (even if technically unique), that's definitely something Panda came down hard on.
Truthfully, though, it's really tough to tell without specifics. I'm more on EGOL's side of the fence - my gut feeling is that 20 micro-sites is excessive and I'd strongly suspect quality issues.
Some questions that might help you pin things down:
(1) Has traffic dropped across the entire cluster of sites or just the main site?
(2) Can you pin traffic drops down to any given date, set of keywords, or pages? Drill down as far as you can - that's always the most important first step, IMO.
(3) Are some of your micro-sites essentially dead - no traffic or ROI? You might not have to go all-or-none here. Odds are that some small % of your micro-sites are creating a large % of your value (let's call it an 80/20 rule). It's likely you could kill 10-15 of them with very little harm - at least that's what I typically see. You don't have to drop all 20 cold-turkey.
-
Where I think things potentially go wrong is that they have around 20 micro sites in operation...
Did they built all of these outhouses because they thought they would be a source of "links" ?
The first thing that I would do is to be sure that the content that is in use on their site today, right now, is unique content that originated with the company. If that is not the case, then it is time to throw things overboard or noindex the items that are not original and unique. If everything is original and unique then I would get into an "improvement & consolidation" mode, pulling good content out of the outhouses, improve it to the point of being Great Content, and posting it on the main site.
Keep in mind that problems related to Panda, Penguin, or other algos occur when you are crossways with one or more Google Principles. These can be really hard to diagnose and require a full site audit requiring many hours, done be someone who really knows their stuff. What you will get here with a generalized question is not much more than kibitzin'.
-
Hi Jay,
Do you have any dates that you can refer to in Analytics that show drop that might coincide with a penalty / algorithm update?
-Andy
-
Thank you everyone. I agree as well that it isn't the right approach. Moving forward though it would be extremely beneficial to pinpoint the exact cause of this recent decrease in ranking. It's peculiar to witness strong and reliable gains prior to a significant drop across the board on the heels of this update.
Let's say someone is creating multiple pages that target minor variations of the same keyword. Using unique, but essentially re-written content for all pages. If this was all hosted on the same site it would then be a clear violation of Panda.
"Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?" - Amit
It would not be duplicate content but could be seen as redundant articles on similar topics.
However, if re-written content that's similar in scope is spread across multiple domains as opposed to being hosted on the same site, would it not fall into the same Panda category?
-
I agree with Andy, your description of the setup sounds pretty excessive. Plus, just because content is unique and professionally written doesn't mean that it's high quality. If the sites all say the same thing but in different ways, then none of them are contributing anything meaningful. And your branding is diffused across a zillion different sites to boot.
-
Hi Jay,
Anyone know if Panda may target this type of approach even if the quality and uniqueness is appropriate?
No, this doesn't sound to me like Panda at all.
You mention they have microsites and blogs in operation - presumably this has been done to try and rank for additional phrases? I can't see many other reasons why this would be done.
My opinion here is to pull both the microsites and blogs back in and just create a blog on their own site (if they don't already have one). I wouldn't bother 301ing any external sites / posts back to those they might want to re-published on their current site either. You need to be advising them to start from scratch and ditch the chaff. If these external sites have all had a part to play in their current problems, then I would just distance yourself from them altogether.
...they all feature content that's of the same industry and broad topic
When looking at their own site, you need to also be advising them not to create blogs posts for the sake of it. Rather than creating 4-5 articles a week, tell them to create just 1 or two really high quality (and longer) articles weekly.
I hope this helps.
-Andy
-
Hi Jay,
Its a difficult question to answer however I can point you in a direction John Mueller of Google Switzerland has a hangout on Fridays at his g+ hang out below You can pose the question to him at times if he cant get an answer he will come back to you. Hope this helps
https://plus.google.com/+JohnMueller/posts
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-hours
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
-
Sudden Drop in Mobile Core Web Vitals
Web Vitals Screengrab.PNG For some reason, after all URLs being previously classified as Good, our Mobile Web Vitals report suddenly shifted to the above, and it doesn't correspond with any site changes on our end. Has anyone else experience something similar or have any idea what might have caused such a shift? Curiously I'm not seeing a drop in session duration, conversion rate etc. for mobile traffic despite the seemingly sudden change.
Technical SEO | | rwat0 -
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 -
Two "Twin" Domains Responding to Web Requests
I do not understand this point in my Campaign Set-Up. They are the same site as fas as I understand Can anyone help please? Quote from SEOMOZ "We have detected that the domain www.neuronlearning.eu and the domain neuronlearning.eu both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here." thanks John
Technical SEO | | johnneuron0 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
Panda recovery timeframe question
Site was hit by Panda Aug. 22nd. Lost 90% of Google traffic. I know 🙂 We think we found a reason and made few changes to landing pages structure. Updated sitemaps submitted. When can we expect effect (if any) - few days or after next Panda data refresh? Thank you!P.S. What is also interesting, similar traffic loss from Bing/Yahoo happened at exactly the same date. Does that mean Bing is "stealing" search results from Google when can't provide their own relevant results? 🙂
Technical SEO | | LocalLocal0 -
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 -
From your perspective, what's wrong with this site such that it has a Panda Penalty?
www.duhaime.org For more background, please see: http://www.seomoz.org/q/advice-regarding-panda http://www.seomoz.org/q/when-panda-s-attack (hoping the third time's the charm here)
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0 -
Is it Panda?, how to deal with AP etc newswire articles
A site I have lost 30% of its traffic in June then another 10% in July, is it Panda? The site has 10's of thousands of AP or other syndicated articles on it, they are not there for SE benefits, they are categorized and relevant to the people who read them, the site gets half of its traffic from type ins/bookmarks. Should I nofollow the articles or rel="canonical" them? what can help...... Cheers
Technical SEO | | adamzski0