2013 Panda Update Question

[Freelancer13]

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

[Freelancer13]

i just ran a diagnostic - no errors, no duplicate content, nothing..

[Freelancer13]

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?

[Marcus_Miller]

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?

[Freelancer13]

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?

[Marcus_Miller]

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