2013 Panda Update Question
-
Hi everyone, I'm new here
So far I've had wonderful success seo wise and none of the updates (Penguin nor Panda) affected any sites, until this one.For example, one site has 7 keywords I'm optimizing for. Out of those 7, all but 2 (and variations of the 2 - one word vs long-tail) completely tanked. These keywords were all on page 2/3. One of the two survivors never budged from page 2 (it's a brand keyword so I was sooo happy to finally get it to page 2)
Now when I check rankings, the other terms show up in the 200-400 spots, but NOT for the URL I was optimizing for (category page) but instead for random products in the category.
The only thing I've done differently with the 2 keywords that are still doing well, was focus - we did more link-building for those, but not an extreme amount. Never over-optimize.
My question is, how did 2 survive and 5 are still floating up and down. Last night I saw one go up 122 spots, now today down 14. I'm really struggling with this.
Thank you
-
i just ran a diagnostic - no errors, no duplicate content, nothing..
-
I just did a quick check right now with a free plagiarism checker. When I get the return I see some outside blog posts using the same text - not 100% though.
Just wondering if having these removed will alleviate the situation or if I need to do more?
-
Hey, what have you done so far?
Have you checked internally for duplicates? Have you used copyscape to see if there is external duplication?
A single blog post should not cause a huge problem, I would suspect that this may be more widespread.
What CMS system are you using here?
-
Thank you!
I am finding duplicate content category pages and then a blog article with the same content. Will having the blog article removed fix this or does the content on the category need to be re-written?
-
Hey, it's going to be near impossible to answer that question without examples I am afraid.
The update this week was a Panda update so should be primarily related to content and duplication so the very first thing I would check for is duplicate content issues on and off your site.
This would be a good read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
Then, maybe run your site through copyscape to get some quick feedback on any external duplication issues.
If you have been hit, there will be a reason so you need to start doing some digging, get a handle on the issue and put measures in place to resolve them.
Also, consider, this may be something to do with the work the client is doing on the site or more likely the content or it could be totally external factors (scrapers stealing content etc).
Hope that gives you some direction!
Marcus
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
-
Browser caching for SEO - Hinders updates
Hi Guys Just seeking some advise. We know Google is very keen about site speed and the one of the best ways to manage this is to cache images use CDNs etc.. However what I am finding is that we have rapid site speed but any new updates take a few refreshes or we have to wait for the ISP to clear their DNS for the updates to show. I have put the meta tag for non-caching and on cPanel I have developer mode active on the caching sessions which in theory will not store anything in the cache for 6 hours. Does anyone know of anything else which can force a wordpress site on an update or image/post/page or datasbase for the browser to be flushed? I think possibly this will only be good as other users browsers may have similar issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Question about getting domain name re-indexed
I recently swapped my domain from www.davescomputers.com to www.computer-help.com . Originally www.computer-help.com was 301 re-directing to www.davescomputers.com ...however my long term goal is to eventually rebrand my business so I decided to utilize the other domain by swapping the main domain. Is consistant blogging the best way to get Google to re-index the entire website? My focus has been quality posts and sharing them with vairus social profiles I created.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidMolnar0 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
To merge or not to merge? That is the question.
I am planning to do something I never did, and I am wondering if it's really a good idea or not. I have four websites, all of the same company, each one with a different domain and different content: one has been the main official site for 16 years, 200 unique per month, indexed for 134 keywords, Domain Authority 17, 13 linking root domains one has been used as the main site from 2003 to 2006, it's focused on a specific business they actually discontinued, still online, no update since 2006, 500 unique per month, indexed for 92 keywords, Domain Authority 13, 8 linking root domains another has been a built on 2010 and maintained for less than year, and it's focused on a business they never really started, still online, no update since 2010, 3000 unique per month, indexed for 557 keywords, Domain Authority 25, 84 linking root domains a fourth one has been also built on 2010 and focused on a business never really started, still online, no update since 2010, 100 unique per month, indexed for 4 keywords, Domain Authority 6, 3 linking root domains Each website has traffic and links, all links being natural, they never tried to gain links in any way, they never did on page optimization, they never ever thought about SEO. They are not event interlinked. So, my idea is to merge all of them, putting websites 2, 3 and 4 as subfolders of the main site and replicating the old content there. Because those sites have traffic, incredibly one of the abandoned sites has 3000 unique per month, while the main site just 200! My doubts are: does it make sense to merge everything from a SEO prospective? A part from doing 301 correctly, what else should I be careful to do or not to do? website number 4 it's really outdated, content and structure is not easy to merge with the rest, traffic is really small, is it worth spending the time to merge it? Finally I also have a problem; customer didn't want to merge them, they agreed to, but they don't want visitors of the main site to be able to navigate to the old ones, so once moved and redirected I would have to put them in the sitemap of the main site but avoid linking to them on the actual "main" site. As far as I know google crawler doesn't like to find pages in sitemaps which are not reachable through a linking path on the website, is that correct? Is that going to make all the merging work useless? Should I convince the client to at least put small links in the footer or on a page linked from the footer?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | max.favilli0 -
2 links from the same external page question
Hi, I have always thought if 2 links on a single page, both going to the same url wouldnt pass PR from both. I watched a Matt Cutts vid and he was saying in the original algo it was built in that both links would pass PR. So for example if I guest posted say 1000 words and this article had 2 links pointing to the same url would they both work? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
Microsite question
Good morning, I have a client who is a local realtor www.chantre.com and they have several locations in their region. We created individual sites for their locations that are linked from their main site (on the left bottom). I need some advice and guidance... Are the location sites a good consideration as microsites? I know we should include the rel=canonical tag and are in the process of doing so, but any comments on this would be appreciated I know the answer to this one, but the client insists on continually asking about it...would it be better to have the location sites linked from the main site as subdomains? Any other suggestions to either prove or disprove our technique in breaking out the location sites, whether it's a good idea or if we are harming their SEO is appreciated THANKS!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gXeSEO
Darlene0 -
Internal structure update
How often does google update the internal linking structure of a website ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Panda 2.5
I'm sure we have all read about the latest round of Google's algorithm changes also known as the "Panda 2.5" updates. This latest update seems to have hit some pretty large press release sites including PR Newswire and Businesswire (both of these have a great page rank and domain authority making them a great tool for SEO's in regards to inbounds links). Ultimately this update has directly affected their sites traffic, keyword rankings, and the number of indexed pages in Google. But what will this do to our smaller sites that benefit from these great links? Will these panda updates continue to target these content farms and lower their domain authority? Will that extrapolate out and effect the domain authority of our sites? What are your thoughts for those of us that utilize these services, should we re-evaluate our process? I look forward to a great discussion. Regards - Kyle
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0