What to do with pre-panda gateway pages?
-
We used an SEO firm back in the day to create gateway landing pages for our site heavily optimized for certain keywords and phrases. They ranked well for years and then the panda/penguin updates hit and the pages no longer rank at all. The content on the pages is actually useful and decent (http://payloadz.com/info-sell-ebooks.asp). The html is over-optimized on keyword though.
What should be our strategy here? The keywords and phrases are still important for us. Should we move the content to another URL with less HTML optimization, remove the existing optimization on the pages where they are? The backlinks are of poor quality as well.
We have gone through a disavow process and still no affect on these pages after a month.
-
You're welcome Shannon. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to help out, even if the news isn't so good to hear.
-
Thanks Everette, your candid response is much appreciated.
-
If the page you linked to is indicative of the other pages as well, I'd just delete them, let the page 404 so it gets removed from the index, disavow the links, and start over with better content. You say the content is useful, but I read the entire thing and it sounds very much like it was written for the sole purpose of stuffing a bunch of keywords about selling eBooks. It was not very useful at all.
My advice would be to get rid of pages like that completely and if you're going to write about selling eBooks do so without thinking so much about keywords or SEO, and just focus on providing the absolute BEST guide to selling eBooks that you can. This will require a writer who is actually an expert at selling eBooks, which means it will cost more money to produce the content. Think quality over quantity. Scale down your landing page strategy drastically and just be as informative as you can.
Good luck. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but you're not the only one having to deal with it.
-
Thanks for the reply Erwan. Unfortunately, a new domain just is not in the cards for us at this time.
-
A French e-commerce had the same issue:
-
they picked a new domain.
-
they used a java-script redirection from the old homepage (no 301), which is not supposed to pass penalty (to be verified) - it helps to redirect people who bookmarked the website/the direct visitors.
-
they tried to understand the reason of the penalty and changed their way to build links (no more links on farm websites, diversified anchor etc, more nofollow, no over optimized titles etc).
-
they updated the top old links.
-
they used SEA and bought ads the first 6 months to keep the same traffic.
One year later, they got an even better traffic than before the penalty.
-
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
-
Duplicated page titles
Dear friends, We have a problem which occurs on our page with duplicated page titles. Landlords are posting rooms on our page and most of them are giving the same name to the rooms and after that, we are getting more and more duplicated page titles. We are applying random whit this title tag: Accommodation for students in {city.name}: {name}. English title
On-Page Optimization | | Eurasmus.com
Certified student rooms in {city.name}: {name} English title
Erasmus room for students in {city.name} | {name} English title
Student room in {city.name}: {name} English title Also our title tag is sometimes to long but there is no possibility to make them shorter. I think. If anyone would have some idea be free to comment and help us. Kind regards Miško Macolić Tomičić0 -
Sub-pages have no pa
I took over a website a few months ago which is not performing well at all for chosen keywords. When I first inspected it, I found a rel canonical tag pointing to the homepage on every page. This was quickly deleted and all the pages were fetched in webmaster tools. 3 months later and the website is still performing badly. When I use the mozbar, it shows that all of the sub-pages have a pa of 1. It is only a small site and all of the pages are linked to on the navbar in a simple way. The links are not made using javascript and all the pages are on the sitemap which is submitted to wmt. I have checked that all of the changes that have been made have been indexed as well. Could it be possible that google still sees the canonical tag even though its not there? I can't think of any other reason why the pages have no pa or why it is so far behind the competitors despite having better content and links. Also, the site is appropriate for adults, but I found (among the mess left for me) a meta ratings tag set to "general". This has now been deleted, could it negatively affect rankings?
On-Page Optimization | | maxweb0 -
Duplicate Content on Category Pages
Hi Everyone, I have a few category pages within a category for my eCommerce store and I've recently started writing a short description for each. However a lot of these paragraphs can be replicated for the same category. For instance '1 Inch thickness' I'll show all the information, and it'll be very similar to '2 inch thickness' but obviously one is 1 inch and one is 2 inch so I would only be changing one keyword and that is the thickness. I feel that this is helping customers because it has all the information in each category e.g. how to filter your choices. But it might be duplicate content. What would you recommend?
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Jobs listing page optimization
I've a client with a jobs page. I've found that a high traffic, low competition keyword phrase 'OH jobs' and wish to optimize appropriately. The trouble is that there is hardly any body text and any number of job entry listing. As the listing which all go to individual job description pages, naturally fit the description (part description) OH Job - would it be good to use this description within the anchor text of the links? If so is there a maximum? I've been trawling around SEOmoz and Google Search and have got more and more bogged down! ta
On-Page Optimization | | catherine-2793880 -
On-Page Report Card: Whats up with the TITLE of the page?
Started to fix the SEO issues on a customers website. When I run a "On-Page Report Card" It says that the title of the webpage:
On-Page Optimization | | maklarlabbet
www.visbymaklarna.se/visbymaklarna.html Is "visbymäklarna - Ditt förstahandsval på gotland." But if I check in the source code of the webbrowser the title should be:
name="title" content="Vi är mäklarna på Gotland som sätter människan i första rummet" /> (Actually this is with special encoding for the swedish characters. The title in coded text is: "Vi är mäklarna på Gotland som sätter människan i första rummet") Anyway the title of the webpage source code and the title of what SEOmoz reports is different. Why is that?0 -
PANDA Attack: Too many on page links
Hey guys! I have a bit of a dilemma...one of my sites got hit by Panda 😞 The content itself contains about 10 links, however since the site is a process directory, at the bottom of the page you will find that the visitor can also browse process directory by name or page and then beneath this there are 80 links :s My concern is that if i remove this I will lose internal link juice! HELP! What approach should I take? I was thinking of either reducing the number of links OR hiding it by using Java ORRRR removing the links entirely. Advice anyone? This is a page as an example: http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/files/csrsc/25349/ All pages are like this!
On-Page Optimization | | OrangeGuys0 -
Missing meta descriptions on indexed pages, portfolio, tags, author and archive pages. I am using SEO all in one, any advice?
I am having a few problems that I can't seem to work out.....I am fairly new to this and can't seem to work out the following: Any help would be greatly appreciated 🙂 1. I am missing alot of meta description tags. I have installed "All in One SEO" but there seems to be no options to add meta descriptions in portfolio posts. I have also written meta descriptions for 'tags' and whilst I can see them in WP they don't seem to be activated. 2. The blog has pages indexed by WP- called Part 2 (/page/2), Part 3 (/page/3) etc. How do I solve this issue of meta descriptions and indexed pages? 3. There is also a page for myself, the author, that has multiple indexes for all the blog posts I have written, and I can't edit these archives to add meta descriptions. This also applies to the month archives for the blog. 4. Also, SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links on my blog page (also indexed) and their consequent tags. This also applies to the author pages (myself ). How do I fix this? Thanks for your help 🙂 Regards Nadia
On-Page Optimization | | PHDAustralia680 -
What is the Best Landing Page setup?
I have seen a few different types of landing pages. I am trying to figure out which style works best from a SEO perspective. 1. The cram everything possible onto the page approach ala nyt.com? 2. The fill your home page with a ton of links approach like cnn.com? 3. The put just a small sample of your content approach like seomoz? I see 4 blog snippets, a "Go To My Campaign" call to action and that's it. 4. Pages like Groupon.com which have 100% focus on a call to action. I also notice many focused pages like Groupon remove the header and footer on their landing page. Does that help the page retain it's PR better?
On-Page Optimization | | KevinPatrick0