Panda and Large Web Presence

[BrandishJay]

I'm experiencing some recent significant drops in rankings across the board for a client of mine and I suspect that it's probably related to Panda. Their internet presence features completely unique, useful, well written content by certified industry experts. Further, all content is of proper length and again serves a core purpose, providing helpful information to their viewers. Where I think things potentially go wrong is that they have around 20 micro sites in operation, including multiple web 2.0 blogs. There are also multiple sites in operation that target more specific areas of the same city. Again all of the content is unique, but they all feature content that's of the same industry and broad topic.

Despite everything being 100% unique, I fear it's too excessive. Anyone know if Panda may target this type of approach even if the quality and uniqueness is appropriate?

[Dr-Pete]

Panda updates have hit microsites where content across the sites was either duplicated or "thin", although thin is often in the eye of the beholder. Keep in mind, and I mean this kindly, that "unique" is not always high-quality, and the quest for technical uniqueness can lead to practices where microsites are just spinning out versions of content with slightly different keyword concepts or ordering, etc. In other words, it's technically "unique", but most people wouldn't view it as valuable.

Early Panda updates did hit certain kinds of spun-off content hard, including geo-located content. In other words, you spun out your plumbing services page for 5,000 cities and it only differed by city names and a few basic facts (even if technically unique), that's definitely something Panda came down hard on.

Truthfully, though, it's really tough to tell without specifics. I'm more on EGOL's side of the fence - my gut feeling is that 20 micro-sites is excessive and I'd strongly suspect quality issues.

Some questions that might help you pin things down:

(1) Has traffic dropped across the entire cluster of sites or just the main site?

(2) Can you pin traffic drops down to any given date, set of keywords, or pages? Drill down as far as you can - that's always the most important first step, IMO.

(3) Are some of your micro-sites essentially dead - no traffic or ROI? You might not have to go all-or-none here. Odds are that some small % of your micro-sites are creating a large % of your value (let's call it an 80/20 rule). It's likely you could kill 10-15 of them with very little harm - at least that's what I typically see. You don't have to drop all 20 cold-turkey.

[EGOL]

Where I think things potentially go wrong is that they have around 20 micro sites in operation...

Did they built all of these outhouses because they thought they would be a source of "links" ?

The first thing that I would do is to be sure that the content that is in use on their site today, right now, is unique content that originated with the company.  If that is not the case, then it is time to throw things overboard or noindex the items that are not original and unique.  If everything is original and unique then I would get into an "improvement & consolidation" mode, pulling good content out of the outhouses, improve it to the point of being Great Content, and posting it on the main site.

Keep in mind that problems related to Panda, Penguin, or other algos occur when you are crossways with one or more Google Principles.  These can be really hard to diagnose and require a full site audit requiring many hours, done be someone who really knows their stuff.  What you will get here with a generalized question is not much more than kibitzin'.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Jay,

Do you have any dates that you can refer to in Analytics that show drop that might coincide with a penalty / algorithm update?

-Andy

[BrandishJay]

Thank you everyone. I agree as well that it isn't the right approach. Moving forward though it would be extremely beneficial to pinpoint the exact cause of this recent decrease in ranking. It's peculiar to witness strong and reliable gains prior to a significant drop across the board on the heels of this update.

Let's say someone is creating multiple pages that target minor variations of the same keyword. Using unique, but essentially re-written content for all pages. If this was all hosted on the same site it would then be a clear violation of Panda.

"Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?" - Amit

It would not be duplicate content but could be seen as redundant articles on similar topics.

However, if re-written content that's similar in scope is spread across multiple domains as opposed to being hosted on the same site, would it not fall into the same Panda category?

[BradsDeals]

I agree with Andy, your description of the setup sounds pretty excessive. Plus, just because content is unique and professionally written doesn't mean that it's high quality. If the sites all say the same thing but in different ways, then none of them are contributing anything meaningful. And your branding is diffused across a zillion different sites to boot.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Jay,

Anyone know if Panda may target this type of approach even if the quality and uniqueness is appropriate?

No, this doesn't sound to me like Panda at all.

You mention they have microsites and blogs in operation - presumably this has been done to try and rank for additional phrases? I can't see many other reasons why this would be done.

My opinion here is to pull both the microsites and blogs back in and just create a blog on their own site (if they don't already have one). I wouldn't bother 301ing any external sites / posts back to those they might want to re-published on their current site either. You need to be advising them to start from scratch and ditch the chaff. If these external sites have all had a part to play in their current problems, then I would just distance yourself from them altogether.

...they all feature content that's of the same industry and broad topic

When looking at their own site, you need to also be advising them not to create blogs posts for the sake of it. Rather than creating 4-5 articles a week, tell them to create just 1 or two really high quality (and longer) articles weekly.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

[Brett-Harland]

Hi Jay,

Its a difficult question to answer however I can point you in a direction John Mueller of Google Switzerland has a hangout on Fridays at his g+ hang out below You can pose the question to him at times if he cant get an answer he will come back to you. Hope this helps

https://plus.google.com/+JohnMueller/posts

https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/office-hours

https://plus.google.com/events/c8ke0pi2m6ak5cieecpt3lss2t8