Panda recovery. Is it possible ?
-
Dear all,
To begin, english is not my native language, so I'm very sorry if I make some mistake.
On the 23th march 2012, Panda penalized my website (a coupon website) Avec-Reduction (dot com for the url). At this date, I have lost more than 70% of my traffic.
The structure of the website was like an e-commerce website. Categories -> merchant page -> coupon page. The content was to thin for Google, I'm agree wit that.
So, in may, I have made a new version. Here you can see the most important modifications :
- A smallest header (-100px height).
- 2 columns website (the oldest website had 3 columns)
- I have deleted the category menu with the list of all categories and the alphabetical menu.
- less ads on the website (since few days I have also deleted the 2 adense blocks)
- The coupons was promoted with the thumbs of the merchant on the home listing. Now I have few top lists in text only.
- I have deleted all the categories pages (one page by category of merchant, with the listing of all the merchants of the category). Now I have only one page for this. Same thing with the alphabetical pages. All these deleted pages have a 301 redirect. The 2 new pages (categorie page and alphabetical page) are on noindex.
- I have deleted all the promo codes pages, all the coupons are now on the merchant page (301 redirect used).
- I have create an anti-spam system for the review codes (I have a lot of spam on these forms, even if I cleaned every day/2days). Now, I have no spam.
- Visitors have now the possibility to put a note and a review for each merchant. This fonctionality is new, so not a lot of reviews for the moment.
- All the merchants pages without promo codes have a noindex on the robot tag.
- Since july, I have the possibility to use the "title" of each promo code. I can personnalised the promo code. On the same time, to have more content, I have the possibility to add sales or great promos for each merchants, not only promo codes.
- Affiliate links are created on JS which open a new window (a redirect page with noindex).
That's the end of the most important changes on my website. I have a better speed page (/2 since july) because I have optimized my images, CSS, JS...
At the end of july, I had health problem and the website has no update until the first days of october. Now, the website is updated every day, but between july and october I have no panda recovery.
I have no duplicate content, I try to add the most content I can. So I don't understand why Google Panda penalized me again and again. Some of my competitors have a lot of keyword stuffing (4, 5, 6, ... 10 lines of KS on each merchant pages). Some of them have only affiliate merchants, automatic script to put coupons on websites), few "same" websites...
I have less than 30% of affiliated merchant, I validate all the coupons or promo manually, I personalized all my coupons... So I don't understand what to do.
I will appreciate all help. If you see problems on my wesite or if you know tips to have a panda recovery, I will be very happy to have informations.
Many thanks for all.
Sincerely,
Florent
-
Dear Edward,
You are right. I have seen some US/UK coupons websites with informations about the company or the website (payment methods, shipping methods...). I think it's a good idea to have better content. On France, there are not a lot of coupons websites with these types of informations. The market on our country is important but less thant country like USA. So, a lot of websites are made automaticly, in few days some webmasters have few coupons website and they win money because they have a network with power.
I think I will use this option on the near future. 2600 merchants, it will be long to add these informations but if it's possible to have a Panda Recovery, I think it's not a hard work, just necessary.
Thx for your help.
Sincerely,
F.
-
I've worked with a few Coupon/Promo Codes sites since the launch of Penguin with some success and some failure. The biggest issues I've found between coupon sites is a lack of truly original content and very thin content, with pages frequently saying the same thing as other pages but slightly re-worded. Duplicate content issues are usually common as well.
Ex: "Check out our coupon codes for [company/website]...[more filler text here]."
One strategy that seems to be fairly effective (and logical) for such sites is filling the retailer coupon pages with information relevant to the coupons (which obviously vary) as well as the company. Ex: company history, background, etc. -- content that's truly unique from page to page.
-
Dear eyepaq,
Many thanks for your reply, that's great.
Like you say, I'm sure that my change are good for the future so when the panda filter (sorry for having used the word penality, in France we used the word "filtre", it's difficult to speak in other language :p).
you don't have to be good to stay safe or recover from panda, you need to be better then the rest of the sites that are covering the same niche.
I'm ok with that, that's the only point on which I have no idea to be better. I have see all the most important US coupons websites to help me but they are to big for me. Technically they are better, better design and I think they have a lot of persons which work every day for the website. In France, there are less competitors, 5 biggest and all the other are very simple website like mine.
+ panda it's only about the content (site speed, affiliate format, links etc are not taking into account - for those you have other filters and penalties)
I know, but havind a better speed is good for visitor. I think it's good for Google to show that speed page is important for the website.
Spot the ones that are still up and try to improve the content in order to be better then those are have a different approach for the same niche / area in order to get a spot for the diverse spots. In this way you will get back.
I will work on this :).
First assess the situation and see if you can be better - in terms of content - then those that are still on top in visibility that are targeting more or less the same content as you do. If you can beat them - change your content strategy and approach the same content in a different format and flow in order to make it on the top results as one of the sites that are part of the diversity results.
Ok but it's very difficult. I use 2 websites on my niche that have better traffic than. Why these 2 websites ? Only because they have a simple design and not a lot of options on the merchant pages. These 2 websites have problems which I haven't got but no pand filter and better traffic. The reason ? They are oldest than me and they have a lot of links (one have more 1 million link). So it's not very clean but they rank well.
Just a last question. Do you think it's better for me to "crypt" the coupon code (on the html code) ? Why ? Just because Google can see that we have all the same code. If I use a crypt code, perhaps it will be better to say "I have unique content" ? Do you think that it'a a good idea ?
Once again many thanks for your post. You are very clear for me and you give me another vision to solve my problem :).
Sincerely,
Florent
-
Hi Florent,
All the changes that you did are very good and for sure it will help your site - but not necessarily on the Panda issue.
When talking about panda you need to consider a few things:
-
panda is not a penalty - it's a filter (very important difference)
-
you don't have to be good to stay safe or recover from panda, you need to be better then the rest of the sites that are covering the same niche.
-
panda it's only about the content (site speed, affiliate format, links etc are not taking into account - for those you have other filters and penalties)
So, fi you are 100% that Panda is to blame for your drop in rankings you need to compare your self with the competition first and see how can you be better then them.
Just put your self in Google shoes - if you have 10 sites on the same niche with more or less the same content you want to keep 1 or 2, populate the rest of the results with diverse results and move the rest -50 or whatever.
If you are not the one on the 1 or 2 set then you are one of the one that just got moved back - way back (down).
Spot the ones that are still up and try to improve the content in order to be better then those are have a different approach for the same niche / area in order to get a spot for the diverse spots. In this way you will get back.
First assess the situation and see if you can be better - in terms of content - then those that are still on top in visibility that are targeting more or less the same content as you do. If you can beat them - change your content strategy and approach the same content in a different format and flow in order to make it on the top results as one of the sites that are part of the diversity results.
Hope it helps. Is it clear or I am beating around the bush ?
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
-
Moving my website to Wordpress, what are the possible consequences?
I am moving my website to WordPress after years. I am curious to know what the best route to maintain as much SEO value as possible would be. We have a lot of 301 redirects currently, and we will maintain those, but what else should we do or know? Thanks for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hwade0 -
How to best add affiliate links in a way that minimizes panda risk?
We have a site of about 100.000 pages that is getting several million of visitors per year via organic search. We plan to add about 50.000 new pages gradually in the next couple of months and would like to add affiliate links to the new pages. All these 50.000 new pages will have unique quality data that a team has been researching for a while. I would like to add in the area under the fold or towards the end of the pages in an unobstrusive way affiliate links to about 5 different affiliate programs with affiliate links customized to page content and of real value to visitors. Since affiliate links are one of the factors that may trigger panda I am a bit nervous whether we should add the affiliate links and if there is any way of implementing the affiliate links in a way that they may be less likely to trigger panda. E.g. would you consider hiding affiliate links from google by linking to intermediate URL (which I would mark as noindex nofolllow) on our domain which then redirects to the final affiliate landing page (but google may notice via chrome or android data) ? Any other idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Help, no organic traffic recovery after new site launch (it's been 6 months)!
I worked with a team of developers to launch a new site back in March. I was (and still am) in charge of SEO for the site, including combining 4 sites into 1. I made sure 301 redirects were in place to combine the sites and pretty much every SEO tactic I can think of to make sure the site would maintain rankings following launch. However, here we are 6 months later and YoY numbers are down -70% on average for organic traffic. Anyone mind taking a look at http://www.guestguidepublications.com and seeing if there's a glaring mistake I'm missing?!?!?! Thanks ahead of time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Annapurna-Digital1 -
Site deindexed after HTTPS migration + possible penalty due to spammy links
Hi all, we've recently migrated a site from http to https and saw the majority of pages drop out of the index. https://www.relate.org.uk/ One of the most extreme deindexation problems I've ever seen, but there doesn't appear to be anything obvious on-page which is causing the issue. (Unless I've missed something - please tell me if I have!) I had initially discounted any off-page issues due to the lack of a manual action in SC, however after looking into their link profile I spotted 100 spammy porn .xyz sites all linking (see example image). Didn't appear to be any historic disavow files uploaded in the non https SC accounts. Any on-page suggestions, or just play the waiting game with the new disavow file? Hku8I
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTI_Digital0 -
301 Redirect from ASP.NET to PHP...Is it possible?
Hi all, I'm trying to migrate my current website over to wordpress however my current website is ASP.NET and obviously Wordpress uses PHP. Is it possible to perform a 301 redirect from a asp.net to a php? Or do you need to convert the asp.net language into php? Or something different? I welcome your thoughts? Regards, Thomas Rochford
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoGri0 -
Penguin Recovery Possible Solution (when all fails...)?
Hi, INTRO We were hit pretty bad - first with unnatural links warning and then (we assume) by penguin. We removed a lot of links and disavowed the removed along with all others we couldn't.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
The manual penalization was revoked but the site is still down. I understand that Penguin and Unnatural links are not the same.
I assume that while our removal and fixes were enough for the manual penalty to be removed the penguin algorithm still disapproves us. Also, I am not expecting to be where we were but we know our current locations don't make sense (several pages seem to be de-indexed). AND THE QUESTION... SINCE ALL HAS FAILED, we consider removing the main landing pages (which were the target for link-building) and build new ones with new URLs. In the old ones placing 404 and not 301. This means that all the spammy links that were built will point to non-existing pages (404)
(besides for those that point to the homepage...) Do you think it will resolve the problem? Or since the spammy links still point to our domain we are still in a problem? (even if to 404 pages). The way we see it, it is the last resort prior to dropping the domain! Thanks0 -
What is next from Google Panda and Google Penguin?
Does anyone know what we can expect next from Google Panda/Penguin? We did prepare for this latest update and so far so good.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jjgonza0 -
3 Sites Covering Similar Topics & Panda
My question will take a bit of explaining, so here goes: I have 3 blogs on the same server: 1. personal finance blog; 2. credit card blog; 3. prepaid credit card blog. The personal finance blog is my flagship site started in 2007, which feeds my family and pays the mortgage. By contrast, the other two sites (started in 2008 and 2010) I would gladly kill if the result would help my personal finance blog. In the fall of 2010 (before Panda) the prepaid card blog was penalized by Google. This has been confirmed by Google in response to a reconsideration request. Of course, they don't say why. I've tried a number of things and resubmitted the site, but with no luck. Both the personal finance blog and credit card blog were hit by Panda 2 (April 11, 2011) and have not recovered. While the personal finance site covers many topics (e.g., investing, credit, debt, money management), its income comes largely from credit cards. We review individual credit cards and have pages that list cards by category (e.g., balance transfer, cash back, travel). The credit card blog does the same thing, but of course covers credit cards in more depth. There is a similar overlap between the prepaid card blog on the one hand, and the credit card blog and personal finance blog on the other. However, all content is unique. I do not currently link between the sites, although until a few months ago I had blogroll links between the sites and a few (less than 10) content links. If you've made it this far (and I hope you have), here are my questions: 1. Could the existence of the credit card and prepaid credit card sites be hurting my personal finance blog's rankings in Google, whether via Panda or otherwise? 2. If there is a reasonable chance that the answer to question 1 is yes, what would you suggest I do? Of course, I could just take down the sites, but I wonder if there are other options. One thought I had was to deindex the two card sites (I assume I can do this by disallowing googlebot via robots.txt) and give it time. Would Google treat this as if the sites did not exist? Both sites get a fair amount of traffic from bing and yahoo, so this option appeals to me. Of course, for all I know the existence of the two card sites are hurting my personal finance blog's rankings in bing and yahoo, too. I thought about selling the sites, but if they are hurting my personal finance site, I grow concerned about how google distinguishes between a site being sold and a webmaster just trying to make the sites look like they are owned by different people. In this regard, I've never tried to hide the common ownership of the sites and have no intention of doing that now. If I kill the sites, should I redirect them to my personal finance site? For the penalized prepaid card site, this seems both risky and unhelpful. But perhaps redirecting the credit card site is an option. Given that the personal finance site is my livelihood, I greatly appreciate your thoughts on my dilemma.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bergerlaw0