Is this Panda?
-
Hi,
I have a page that has been fluctuating a lot the last few days, here are the results:
5/14: #17 (this is where it had been ranking for about 2 months).
5/15: #34
5/16: #33
5/18: #9
5/19: #35
5/20: #13
5/21: #37
I have only made minor changes to the page, and the link profile seems to look good. Here's the page: www.thesandiegocriminallawyer.com/dui.html (targeted KW: San Diego DUI Lawyer, San Diego DUI Attorney).
The page has a lot of high-quality, original, and well-cited content. Any thoughts on what could be causing so much back and forth?
I should state that none of the other rankings for this site (overall) have been impacted. Just this page for DUI related searches (San Diego DUI Lawyer, San Diego DUI attorney, San Diego Drunk Driving Lawyer, etc.).
-
I believe its MibuKotaro
-
Hey Sean,
Trying to PM you but the system can't find your username. Is it Sean Williams?
-
Thank you.
Yeah, San Diego DUI Lawyer and San Diego DUI attorney are highly competitive (it's CA, people like to drink and drive apparently). I'm sure it's similar in Tampa.
I'm working on Local SEO, cause you're right, it's a huge area of opportunity.
-
If you have any further questions or want a second set of eyes sent me a PM and I would be glad to assist. Done A LOT of Penalty analysis so recognizing issues is a fun hobby for me
-
Hi Sean,
Thank you for the response. A few sites were adjusted, not just mine. None of them were wiped out, except for one.
This is a tricky area, as I'm trying to rank an interior page for a category in which a lot of attorneys dedicate their entire practice (hence entire website).
I don't see a decrease in traffic (via GA), so maybe it's not Panda.
I'll keep an eye on the competition. Thanks again.
-
The only reason I would worry about the drop is if it triggers something worse. Actually, dropping 20 spots, when you were already on either page 2 or 3, probably isn't going to hurt you all the match. It looks bad in a report, but, in terms of conversion, I don't think it will effect you all that much.
If I were you, I would focus my energy on local SEO and getting reviews. Granted, I don't spend a lot of time looking into how lawyers rank in other cities, but I have done it some. I've never seen so many review sites trigger for a legal term: "San Diego DUI Lawyer." Not to mention, there is only 1 local result that shows. Perhaps this is a fluke for today, but, man, if it's not, you've got a lot of room to grow there.
-
I agree with Ruben that being only a week it is hard to tell for certain. You had said that you have been checking the rankings also, so what does the first page look like for your terms. Are you the only site seeing this flux?
Again this has been addressed but Panda is content based. Grabbing snippets of your content I only found a slight duplication but that was within your own site. The best indicator of Panda is your organic traffic through Analytics. If your Google only Organic traffic has dropped substantially it is entirely possible that it may be the case.
On the other hand it was only recently announced that the Panda updates were rolling out again and this has been happening for longer. I would watch your rankings for the next two weeks or so, but also the people who are the top 5 organically, since you are already passing them to find you. If after that you still notice you jumping a lot but they aren't maybe its time for a quick competitive analysis to see what they may be doing differently.
-
Hi Ruben,
Thanks for the feedback. I see ur in the legal industry as well.
Yes, the anchor text is too exact - I'm working on fixing that.
I guess it's good news that it's probably not Panda. But it's still tough to drop 20 spots on such an important KW.
Ok, I'll keep monitoring it to see how it goes.
Thanks again.
-
A few things:
1. Unless you scraped all that content, I highly doubt it's Panda.
2. From my understanding, Panda is mostly about content so "the link profile seems to look good," doesn't really matter.
3. Also, I do not agree that your link profile looks good (I do not mean that harshly; I have several pages that are way worse. But, I think you should know). Most of your highest quality links are no-follow and you have a bunch coming from directories. Your anchor text is pretty exact as well.
4. Good news: From everything I've read/heard in this forum or others, when people are hit with Panda/Penguin, they do not fall 20 spaces...they fall like 100. Granted, those are all anecdotal so it could be possible.
5. It's only been a week. Yes, 20 spaces is definitely something to pay attention to, but I'd just monitor it for at least another week.
I hope this helps.
Good luck,
Ruben
-
Moz Rank Tracker AND Google it myself with Google Incognito.
-
Can I ask what method you use to come up with those stats on a daily basis, and how confident you are that they are accurate? .... tom
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
-
Blog content and panda?
If we want to create a blog to keep in front of our customers (via email and posting on social) and the posts will be around 300 - 1000 words like this site http://www.solopress.com/blog/ are we going to be asking for a panda slap as the issue would be the very little shares and traction after the first day or two. Also would panda only affect the blogs that are crap if we mix in a couple of really good posts or would it affect theses as well and possibly even the site? Any help would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Internal linking using exact keywords Bad – Post Panda
Internal linking using exact keywords Bad – Post Panda Any tips for internal linking ,how can we target landing pages to rank well using internal linking. Use of Keywords in within site links, is it bad? Are footer links bad? Use of Siloing artichture bad or good? What a best linking model for Ecommerce Site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Panda / Penguin Testing on a Site - Has anyone see this?
Hi, Trying to diagnose the fall of our site. We fell mainly with Panda 3.4 and then a little more with Penguin. We have a main site with 200 pages and an attached blog. example domain.com/blog Then blog that was really small with only 7 posts. One keyword phrase example: "ace widget software" has ranked # 2 and 3 through the entire storm. The page that is ranking is in our main root site (not the blog). We used to rank for 200 phrases now only rank for about 10 Over the past week I stumbled on the fact that if I create a new post in my blog, those pages rank in 3 days. Good rankings, #2 on one and at least first page on the other 5 pages. One page ranked #2 in 17 hours. The test I am conducting: I am now testing to see if maybe there is some coding issue on our site, we do not use a template but a 3 column design built in Dreamweaver using older style tables etc. 1. Putting a new page on the old design. 2. Taking an existing page and putting into new design without side columns. 3. Already testest - adding new page to blog (success on this test) Seems if it was a coding issue/ design the two or three keywords phrases that stayed steady through the storm would have fallen. our site: www.TranslationSoftware4u.com Has anyone else been adding new content to see it rank really good but cannot get the other pages to bounce back up in rankings? Open to ideas of why this is happening. Thanks in advance! Force7
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Force70 -
To index or not to index search pages - (Panda related)
Hi Mozzers I have a WordPress site with Relevanssi the search engine plugin, free version. Questions: Should I let Google index my site's SERPS? I am scared the page quality is to thin, and then Panda bear will get angry. This plugin (or my previous search engine plugin) created many of these "no-results" uris: /?s=no-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Ano-results%3Akids+wall&cat=no-results&pg=6 I have added a robots.txt rule to disallow these pages and did a GWT URL removal request. But links to these pages are still being displayed in Google's SERPS under "repeat the search with the omitted results included" results. So will this affect me negatively or are these results harmless? What exactly is an omitted result? As I understand it is that Google found a link to a page they but can't display it because I block GoogleBot. Thanx in advance guys.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClassifiedsKing0 -
Penguin/Panda/Domain Purchase
If I move forward with the acquisition: 1. Should I, if there is a way, just acquire the domain and then attempt to unlink existing links? 2. Can I just buy the domain, completely kill the site, and then build again from scratch? Even if I do that, the links to the domain will still be out there. 3. Should I even move forward with the purchase if I know these tactics have been used? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbuckles0 -
Has there been a 'Panda' update in the UK?
My site in the UK suddenly dropped from page 1 and out of top 50 for all KWs using 'recliner' or a derivative. We are a recliner manufacturer and have gained rank over 15 years, and of course using all white hat tactics. Did Google make an algo update in the Uk last week?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0 -
How to determine the correct number of ad units post-Panda
What guidelines are you using to determine the correct number of ad units? Also is it number of units per page or the size of the ads (visually)? Any additional guidance or links you can point me to regarding ads in a post-Panda world would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0