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
-
How to optimize WordPress Pages with Duplicate Page Content?
I found the non WWW ans WWW duplicate pages URL only, more than thousand pages.
On-Page Optimization | | eigital0 -
Webs Pages not correct
First of all I am a beginner but that will show with this question. I have moved my website from Wix to Web.com. I had the dns I think that is correct re-direct my site to web.com. Since then some of the pages from wix still show up even though they are no long apart of my site. Secondly when I go to google and type in cestoday.com some of the pages gives me a 401 or 404 error code, and others do not link to the proper page on my website. They go to my web-site but not the correct page. What do I do. Thank you Dave
On-Page Optimization | | redsman944
cesyes@hotmail.com In reference to my last question about moz not being able to see my pages and giving me an "F" I thought you might find it interesting to know that that same page once moved got an A amazing.0 -
On page SEO Strategy / What pages to use?
What is the best page to use for targeting your hard to rank keywords? The keyword phrases in question here are "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing", "Custom Aquariums", & "Acrylic Aquariums" As of right now we have created 3 separate pages for each one of these keyword phrases. http://seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums for "Custom Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums/acrylic-aquariums/ for "Acrylic Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/services/acrylic-tank-manufacturing/ for "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing" Or are we better of using the home page http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/ for the our main hard to rank for terms. Generally speaking I would think more people will link to our home page.
On-Page Optimization | | SeaQuatic0 -
What kind of pages are they?
Hi all, after making an analysis of my website the tool has found two pages that I don't know what refers to: /?page id=2058 (only one page of this kind) /?attachment id= (only one page of this kind) does anyone know what kind of pages they could be? Do the have relevancy regading SEO? The plattform is Wordpress. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Duplicate Page Content on Empty Manufacturer Pages
I work for an internet retailer that specializes in pet supplies and medications. I was going through the Crawl Diagnostics for our website, and I saw in the Duplicate Page Content section that some of our manufacturer pages were getting flagged. The way our site is set up is that when products are discontinued we mark them as discontinued and use 301 redirects to redirect their URLs to other relevant products, brands, or our homepage. We do the same thing with brand and manufacturer pages if all of their products are discontinued. 90% of the time, this is a manual process. However, the other 10% of the time certain products come and go automatically as part of our inventory system with one of our fulfillment partners. This can sometimes create empty manufacturer pages. I can't redirect these empty pages because there's a chance that products will be brought back in stock and the page will be populated again. What can we do so that these pages won't get marked as duplicates while they're empty? Write unique short descriptions about the companies? Would the placement of these short descriptions matter--top of the page under the category name vs bottom of the page underneath where the products would go? The links in the left sidebar, top, and in the footer our part of our site architecture, so those are always going to be the same. To contrast, here's what a manufacturer page with products looks like: Thanks! http://www.vetdepot.com/littermaid-manufacturer.html
On-Page Optimization | | ElDude0 -
Ecommerce: content on category pages
I have to optimize some online Shops and after Panda I really don't know what to think about thin content on product overview pages anymore... used to be that we could improve our rankings easily just by adding 1-2 sentences on such a page. This always worked for non-overly competitive terms. Now It feels like it doesn't work any longer, but I couldn't put my finger on it and I don't have the resources to test. Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/wandtattoos/aus_aller_welt.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
I would add max. 3 lines of text directly over the product thumbnails. What do you think? Is it worth adding some text on a product overview page or do I not even have to bother post-Panda?0 -
Landing page too long
In my first seomoz test I have many tilte pages for products that are over 70 charachers long. The part #'s are long like 10-782-10-10-10-PPxxxx etc. All these part #'s are not my key products and I could delete or truncate. My question is if the part numbers are not that important, is it OK to leave them as is or is ranking being damaged because they exist?
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0 -
Authority of a page
What factors contribute towards the authority of a page ? No. of links to a page ?
On-Page Optimization | | seoug_20050