When Panda's attack...
-
I have a predicament. The site I manage (www.duhaime.org) has been hit by the Panda update but the system seems fixed against this site’s purpose. I need some advice on what i'm planning and what could be done.
First, the issues:
Content Length
The site is legal reference including dictionary and citation look up. Hundreds (perhaps upwards of 1000) of pages, by virtue of the content, are thin. The acronym C.B.N.S. stands for “Common Bench Reports, New Series” a part of the English reports. There really isn’t too much more to say nor is there much value to the target audience in saying it.
Visit Length as a Metric
There is chatter claiming Google watches how long a person uses a page to gauge it’s value. Fair enough but, a large number of people that visit this site are looking for one small piece of data. They want the definition of a term or citation then they return to whatever caused the query in the first place.
My strategy so far…
Noindex some Pages
Identify terms and citations that are really small – less than 500 characters – and put a no index tag on them. I will also remove the directory links to the pages and clean the sitemaps. This should remove the obviously troublesome pages. We’ll have to live with the fact these page won’t be found in Google’s index despite their value.
Create more click incentives
We already started with related terms and now we are looking at diagrams and images. Anything to punch up the content for that ever important second click.
Expand Content (of course)
The author will focus the next six months on doing his best to extend the content of these short pages. There are images and text to be added in many cases – perhaps 200 pages. Still won't be able to cover them all without heavy cut-n-paste feel.
Site Redesign
Looking to lighten up the code and boiler plate content shortly. We were working on this anyway. Resulting pages should have less than 15 hard-coded site-wide links and the disclaimer will be loaded with AJAX upon scroll. Ads units will be kept at 3 per page.
What do you think? Are the super light pages of the citations and dictionary why site traffic is down 35% this week?
-
Traffic (and income) is now down over 55% which is really too bad. The content is unique and highly valuable to the target market.
Any advice about why would be really appreciated.
-
All content is unique. Much of it is 10 years old.
It gets duplicated/syndicated to other sites: some legit, others we constantly fight to have removed. One in India completely copied the site from a few years ago and changed most of the links to internal addresses.
However, the owner wrote all of the non-quote or referenced material.
-
"Google watches how long a person uses a page to gauge it’s value"
Perhaps, but I wouldn't stress about that metric in particular. As you correctly pointed out, a visitor who is looking for a specific item and finds it will leave a site rather quickly.Is the content unique or duplicate?
EDIT: According to a quick check on Copyscape, your content is duplicated across other sites. You definitely need unique content as a starting point.
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
-
What does it mean to build a 'good' website.
Hi guys. I've heard a lot of SEO professionals, Google, (and Rand in a couple of whiteboard Friday's) say it's really important to build a 'good' website if you want to rank well. What does this mean in more practical terms? (Context... I've found some sites rank much better than they 'should' do based on the competition. However, when I built my own site (well-optimised (on-page) based on thorough keyword research) it was nowhere to be found (not even top 50 after I'd 'matched' the backlink profile of others on page 1). I can only put this down to there being 'good quality website' signals lacking in the latter example. I'm not a web developer so the website was the pretty basic WordPress site.)
Algorithm Updates | | isaac6630 -
Googles Search Intent – Plural & Singular KW’s
This is more of a ‘gripe’ than a question, but I would love to hear people’s views. Typically, when you search for a product using the singular and plural versions of the keyword Google delivers different SERPs. As an example, ‘leather handbag’ and ‘leather handbags’ return different results, but surely the search intent is exactly the same? You’d have thought Google was now clever enough to work this out. We tend to optimise our webpages for both the plural and singular variations of the KW’s, but see a mixed bag of results when analysing rankings. Is Google trying to force us to create a unique webpage for the singular version, and another unique webpage for the plural version? This would confuse the visitor, and make no sense.. the search intent is the same! How do you combat this problem? Many thanks in advance. Lee.
Algorithm Updates | | Webpresence0 -
Google's spell check recognize a keyword with volume
When the keyword "acls recertification" (an important keyword for our client) is typed into the Google search box, the word "recertification" is underlined in red. Note that you only need to type "acls rec" to make the red underline appear.BUT, Google does not underline the word "recertification" when it is typed into the search box alone, nor does Google underline the word "recertification" when the following keywords are searched: cpr recertification bls recertification pals recertification ^These are all closely related to the keyword "acls recertification," so this spell check behavior is very inconsistent.Why does this matter? Because no matter how close you come to typing "acls recertification," Google's autocomplete suggestions never include "acls recertification" (because of the perceived misspelling?).BUT, Google does suggest "acls recertification online" in the dropdown menu. If you select the "acls recertification online" suggestion then backspace until the word "online" is gone, the red underline disappears, and "acls recertification" becomes an autocomplete suggestion. VERY strange behavior...I have replicated this issue on various depersonalized browsers and devices, so I am confident that this is not related to my personal settings.This keyword contributes to a large portion of our client's business (they specialize in acls certification and recertification), so you can imagine how concerning this is for us. Note that until very recently (3-4 months ago), this keyword did NOT have any spell-check issues. This keyword averages 2400 searches per month according to AdWords which should be enough volume to allow Google to recognize the correct spellingI posted this issue in the Google product forums, where I was advised to submit feedback directly on the search results page via Google's "feedback" link. I have submitted this feedback to Google, but I thought I would bring this to the MOZ community as well to see if anyone has experienced a similar issue, or has any ideas as to what could be causing this issue.
Algorithm Updates | | RyanKent0 -
I can't understand why I am not rank one on SERPS
Hi Guys, I really cannot understand why I am no longer rank 1 on SERPs? My link data shows great weight in comparison to competitors, my on page SEO is good, nice and diverse on the alt text. I know there are a lot of factors that effect SERPs but I believe I have done well but am still not ranking? Have I missed something?
Algorithm Updates | | TomLondon
I really appreciate any thoughts and ideas. Thanks,
Tom0 -
Interesting SERP trend I'm observing
I know Google has been favoring brands a big names lately, but I'm seeing something a bit more alarming Our company offers custom embroidered patches, and through keyword and search research I have discovered that almost all searches for "embroidered patches" are by people who need embroidered patches and are looking to purchase them, or learn more about the process of purchasing them. The SERPs for this term used to be all embroidered patch companies such as ours. In the past month: We've been outranked by a page on Amazon that's fairly irrelevant. An equally irrelevant ebay page has emerged The Wikipedia page for "embroidered patch" is now number seven. This has pushed three other embroidered patch companies off the first page (not that I'm complaining because it wasn't our company . . . yet). My question is, has anyone else noticed something similar happening, where large sites are gaining ground, in spite of the fact that they have low relevance to the search term?
Algorithm Updates | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Was I hit by panda or penguin?
My site, graciousbridal.com was hit pretty hard by google at the end of April. I actually noticed our traffic decreasing around February, then towards the end of April, it got really bad. Our sales this may were half of what they were in may 2011. We have never done any black or gray hat seo, wouldn't even know how to. I know in the past we did blog commenting, but changed up our keywords so it wasn't all the same, maybe we didn't change it enough?? We have another very similar site that I'm now wondering if we were penalized because they are too similar. We always have changed up the copy, but they have most of the same products. This second site barely gets traffic or sales and has about half of the items graciousbridal does. But, I'm wondering now if it's to similar and that is why we were penalized. I can't figure out what we did wrong to have this big of a drop. I really need help with this as this is supposed to be our busiest season of the year. Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated..
Algorithm Updates | | Craig2100 -
Regarding google panda: would it be wise to use automatic generated content when there is no content.
Hi guys, i am currently creating a local business directory and was deciding when we first start there will be a lot of business listings without a business decription until the owner of that business come to submit a description. so when if a business listing have no business description would it be better to have an automatic generated business description like this:
Algorithm Updates | | usaccess608
www.startlocal.com.au/retail/books/tas_hobartandsouth/Scene_Magazine_2797040.html the automated genrated description for this listing on that page is:
Scene Magazine is a business that is based in Kingston, 7050, TAS: Hobart And South. Scene Magazine is listed in 2 categories including: Magazines and Periodicals Shops and Book Stores and Shops. Within the Magazines and Periodicals Shops category there are 5 businesses within 25 km of Scene Magazine. Some of those businesses included within the radius of 25 km are Island Magazine, Artemis Publishing Consultants and Bride Tasmania Magazine. would google panda affect this or not and would it be wise to use this auto content when there is no description for a business?0 -
What's the best way to discover which search terms competitors are highly-ranked for?
I'd like to know for which search terms competitors appear in the top 10, but I haven't found an efficient way to do so. Any help is appreciated...thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | actionagainsthunger0
