Has anyone recovered from Panda?
-
My two websites were unaffected by the original and 2.0 panda updates, but istring in June my traffic has been down around 30%. In analyzing it appears that my long tail searches have been greatly impacted. So it looks like I am a victim of the mighty panda.My main site, www.uncontesteddivorce-nyc.com is in my opinion a decent looking site, with unique content and no ads, etc., but for whatever reason it has been negatively affected. There might be some duplication of content between certain pages and also my links are all or practically all directory links, though a lot are pretty heavy duty directories.
I see a lot of stuff written giving advice on how to recover from Panda. Has anyone actually done so? How did you do it?
thx
Paul
-
I looked at the links Interestingly someone said that Wordpress sites have been hit particularlyhard. I know that wordpress sites do tend to have problems with duplicate content due to the categories and tags, etc., so that might have something to do with it. Also someone else said that even if your site is not hurt if the sites linking to you are, that this would hurt your traffic. This might be my situation as my decline in traffic is more moderate than what others have reported whose own sites were bitten by Panda.
Does anyone else have any ideas?
-
The only thing that I think a lot of people would have a problem with is your statement that using wordpress is spammy
I believe WordPress had a recent blog post that said around 10% of websites on the Internet are using their platform. That's not the problem of course! Using the free themes (I see a link in your footer) degrades a website. The sitewide link is taking value from each page, and then of course being a free theme it begs the question if the business is legitimate.
I'll be honest: I only paid mind to the first Panda update. I haven't been affected by the first or subsequent updates so I stopped following it, so I can't give you specific advice on how others have seen it through.
Here is a discussion to get you started, though:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4305793.htm
Here is a poll that shows interesting results about recovery:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-recovery-poll-13456.html
Juicy content from SEOmoz:
-
I very much appreciate the honest critique. The only thing that I think a lot of people would have a problem with is your statement that using wordpress is spammy. The rest of your remarks make a lot of sense. But what I am looking for is not just anecdotal "makes sense" speculation type stuff but does anyone have any "hard" experienced of how they redic their site to recover from Panda? It seems that all there is out there is a lot of guesswork based upon Google's public statements, which most of us take with a grain of salt. But once again, very good and helpful response.
Paul
-
Put yourself in Google's shoes: doesn't your website structure and content look familiarly like a content farm? I'm not saying your website is one, but it gives the vibe for several different reasons.
First, the domain is clearly overly-targeted towards keywords. That's a big giveaway that the website is probably not a legitimate business. If you are an attorney, you should instead have a domain registered for your company name. Have branding.
You are using a free WordPress theme. Content farms largely run WordPress because it's so easy to install across many different domains and manage them all with little effort. Content farms grab free themes because, well, they are free. Shouldn't a legitimate business have it's own web design?
You don't have a business listing in Google. When I search for your address I don't see your domain come up. Create one and verify your business number.
Give your website a more personal touch. Your admin name is uncontesteddivorceny. Create an author bio if you plan on having multiple authors, but at the very least use your real name.
To sum up the onpage stuff: it looks like you tried too hard to game the system. If I saw this listing in Google when searching for an actual attorney, I would quickly press back and block your website from appearing in my results again. I mean this criticism constructively.
And then of course there is the external SEO. I only took a brief glance, but it looks like all of your links are from directories, video channels, and comment spam. None of this looks good. Get endorsements from any organizations and websites you can that are actually authoritative. I don't know your industry well enough to give specific advice on this, however.
To answer your question, yes people recover from Panda. But if you are doing SEO right you never had to recover in the first place. SEOmoz has great articles to help you out if you aren't sure where to start.
Cheers.
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
-
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 -
Anyone else noticing "Related Topics" featured snippet? Is this new?
First time I've seen this type of featured snippet and now have seen it twice in the space of a couple hours. Queries on Google UK desktop: surgical instruments Hawking radiation Is this new? It definitely is for the "surgical instruments" search. Google are highlighting related topics/keywords in bold beneath the usual featured snippet. b261ea5b3279991f8549d20127f8fde3.png
Algorithm Updates | | Ria_0 -
I think this website has been hit by Panda, but I would appreciate your opinion
I've been asked to check a possible SEO problem with a website, that has been loosing organic traffic during more than 2 years. I have attached a screen capture from analytics, showing how the organic traffic impact. This website publishes over 15 articles per week, and 12 of them are news with less than 150 words. I think that maybe Panda is hitting the website because of these practice. You can check the website: crazyminds.es I would like to know your opinion about the cause of this lost of organic traffic. On January, 21st 2013 they changed the website design, but the lost of traffic seems to have started before that date. If panda is hitting the website, what should be the best way to correct this situation? They have began now to write news with more than 200 words, but what happens with the old news? Maybe a no-index tag? blocked by robots? how should they manage those? Thank you! organictraffic.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | teconsite0 -
Has anyone else noticed a major increase in Yelp, BBB, etc. results in local SERPs, pushing business websites further down?
Across multiple cities and markets, this seems to be a trend. "Chicago coffee shop" or "Minneapolis hair salon" or "Sacramento car repair" - outside the local 7-pack, virtually every result is Yelp, BBB, Yellowpages, etc. Is this related to algo changes, or simply a result of those national sites pumping major resources into SEO? It just seems to be suddenly far more prevalent than it was even 6 months ago.
Algorithm Updates | | kpclaypool1 -
GWT: Anyone else seen this weird data trend?
I have a client who came to us after recieving a manual unnatural link warning, and probable Penguin penalty. After a lot of hard work, we had the manual penalty revoked, and have done everything we can to get the Penguin penalty lifted. This all happened after the last Penguin data refresh (early Jan), so we're still waiting to see a recovery; but in the meantime, we're seeing some very weird impression data in GWT....... The website targets UK users, and has very little US traffic, except every thursday, GWT reports a massive spike in search impressions from the US. Could this be Google testing the new Penguin data? See our US impressions for since Feb here - http://imgur.com/2Bl9a3f 2Bl9a3f.png
Algorithm Updates | | BabelPR0 -
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 -
Can AJAX implementation affect the rankings in Google Panda?
Hi there, I have the following situation with one of our job sites. We migrate the site to a new application, which is better from design point of view and also usability. For this we use a lot AJAX especially in searches. So every time a user is filtering down their search new results will be shown on the page, at the same url and with no page load. But, having this implementation. affected Bounce rate - which increased from 38% to nearly 60%, PI/visits - which are now half, at 3 and also Avg Time on Site is half that is used to be coming to 2,5 min from nearly 6 min. From Rand post, it is clearly that the content is very important in Google Panda, and all of these parameters we should consider, as it is telling the quality of the content. So, my question will be, can this site be hit by Panda updates (maybe later on) because Bounce Rate, PI/Visits and Avg Time on site, decreased in such way? At the moment we don't measure the Ajax impresion, but as I understood that we can do that though virtual pages in GA, does anyone of you have the experience how to handle this? Won't be this an artificial increase? Thanks, Irina
Algorithm Updates | | InformMedia0 -
Are you seeing changes in your sites today? Panda 2.2?
I've heard rumblings of some Panda sites recovering in the last few days and wondered if the talked about Panda 2.2 has been rolled out. My own site (which actually had a significant boost after Panda) has seen a significant increase in traffic today (started about noon EST yesterday) and a nice increase in Adsense revenue as well. How are your sites doing?
Algorithm Updates | | MarieHaynes1