Panda 4.0 indirectly affecting my rankings (maybe)
-
Hi,
So my site supplies Q&A type of content - user queries a question and generally they get the answer from my site (landing page). I always make sure my content is (1) unique (2) answers the question (3) extensive in answering the question - reason being I rely on social shares quite a bit and that system works very well, sharing happens with my content.
But one of my main pages has dropped from position 5 to position 10 in the last few days - I assume its panda 4.0 because my rankings have been rock for around 2 years.
But I don't think its dropped my site, I think it has boosted others above me. The thing I don't understand is the sites its boosted above me have very little content and in some cases lots of Adsense surrounding it.
I'm not moaning just a bit confused: I have 750 words of good content, another sites comes out of nowhere with 50 words -> how can Google decide the 50 word site is better using the panda algo?
This is me assuming the panda algo is purely content/copy based. Does it take other things into account such as freshness, layout, bounce rate?
Thanks.
-
What's your bounce rate like? Is it high? If so, maybe you do need to make some changes. How about time on page/site?
I'm believing more and more that google uses user engagement metrics to help rank sites. I don't know if this is part of Panda or not though.
As others have said, I wouldn't change anything until the dust has settled.
Implementing a few tables here and there is not a difficult task (I wouldn't have thought) and maybe is just what you need to make the content you have more readable. I would have thought a table is just the tool to display bank holidays! Though, of course, now that the second May bank holiday has passed us, there aren't many left (BOOOOO).
Good luck, and make sure you wait for the dust to settle before you do anything.
Amelia
-
Thank you very much (see my reply below).
-
Thank you very much (see my reply below).
-
Nice, extremely helpful - thanking you both Dennis + David. Its not often I get responses on forums where im actually going to action the advice but I will here.
Going to share a few things in the hope I can gain some more actionable advice/insight.
So im purely after rankings in UK search - a query which is highly valuable to me is 'bank holidays 2014'. I was ranking in the top 5 for the last 2 years (sometimes I would be 3rd for a few months), David is completely correct my content may well be 'stagnant' as I don't refresh my content at all really - little worried it might flick a switch Google's end so I tend to do as little as possible changes wise.
Like I said, I have now dropped to bottom of page (FollowUK) and have even seen flux onto page 2. You will notice a lot of Auth sites which is absolutely fine with me, I understand the reason and the work involved to out rank. Its just the others which confuse me because far as im considered (taken David's advice on competitor analysis) all they have over me is tables. So the ones im looking at are -> year-planner-calendar.wanadoo / ownersdirect / publicholidays - All of which were below me before a week ago.
But I have to admit being open their content looks more interesting than mine, which falls back to Dennis's reply regarding content formatting.
Even still, when you take 900 unique relevant words against 50/150 words you would assume mine would be more valuable to Googe's users - unless you think adding something as simple as a table would do the trick (I doubt it).
Thoughts?
-
Definitely.
I've seen better results for both readership and google if proper formatting is used.
I think Google would prefer it like that as well if you think about it.
I'm betting that you'd hate reading big chunks of text without any breaks, subs, media or bullets.
-
LOL, "Ok, we're going to destroy your rankings shortly. Please, invest more in Adwords afterwards."
Seriously though, I think the algo resets certain factors at the beginning, so these spammed or crappy stuffed sites will get the advantage initially and as a little time passes, the algorithm will be able to catch up and move those sites down - well, in simple terms that is. It'll take 1000 words to fully explain what I really want to say haha.
-
Please dont immediately freak out.These updates when they are just beginning can mess with all kinds of rankings. The last thing you want to do during an update is to go and change all of your content that has "been rock for around 2 years". That would probably be the worst thing you could do, unless you already know of areas on your site that need improvement.
I understand that it sucks to see a competitor soar above you, when their site is "worse" than yours. Sometimes, we see a competitors site as worse, because we want ours to win so badly, rather than looking at the facts. In some cases our competition may beat us in a few areas. It would be more beneficial to you to look closely at the high ranking sites, see if they stay in a high position, and if so, see what you can learn from them. We did this about 6 months ago, when we noticed rankings slipping a bit. We closely analyzed what the other sites strengths were, (they had a few ideas that were awesome) and implemented our own custom strategy, and have been doing great since. You stated that your rankings have been consistantly well during the past few years, does this mean that your site was and content was left stagnant, perhaps while the competition was updating and working hard to out rank you?
Rankings change, it will happen all the time. Sometimes it will be one spot, sometimes it could be many. This is the fun part of advertising and marketing on something you dont own aka Google. A few things to remember are: optimize logically, dont make rash sudden decisions when you see ranking changes, focus on your users, and partner with trusted sources.
@dennis "Each time an algo update (a major one) happens, crap sites will always show up and in many cases, rank better than good sites. " I have seen this also. Maybe this is Google's way of giving the crap sites a break on their PPC budget for a while
-
Thanks for your reply.
Makes sense, hopefully some of these sites get pulled back a little.
Do you think the way a website arranges content on the page matters also? So instead of having a chunk of content in a block, have it broken apart more with sub-headings, tables, bullet points etc?
-
Historically, Panda does consider a lot of other stuff. I would personally wait a few weeks. Each time an algo update (a major one) happens, crap sites will always show up and in many cases, rank better than good sites.
For now, you should look at the site, see if there is anything that you can improve. Internal linking, UI/UX, speed, etc. Monitor your webmaster tools for changes in your visibility and other usual panda stuff.
If you continue to produce great stuff then you should be fine.
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
-
Optimise root level page for secondary keyword or try to make second level rank?
My Main keyword ranks no where in the top 100 for any pages in my site. for / I am ranked at number 10 for a great secondary keyword. Really want to get this secondary keywordranking on /secondary-keyword.html , should I focus my main page only on my primary keyord and remove any references to "Secondary Keyword"? What I feel here is that I would be sacrificing my rank for "Secondary Keyword"
On-Page Optimization | | Adamzoz0 -
Ranking Fluctuations
I need your help. My rankings have been on a wild roller coaster ride since I started optimizing the site with standard on page optimization changes. (No keyword stuffing or over-optimization...) I have only made positive changes for the content on the page; I created unique descriptions for every product. I redirected some urls that weren’t readable into a more user- friendly format. I am only doing completely organic link building, really. Yet for some weird reason the rankings initially rose and then steeply fell and ever since have went back up to the top and right back to not in the top 50 results. Just to give you an example this is a graph of one of our main keywords: https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/gd2q This is another keyword that we admittedly never were in the top 5 results but usually we were in the top 20. Check out the wild fluctuations. If it wasn't the main keyword we were going after, I would probably laugh. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/rcy9 I asked an expert he said he think it might be from a major issue with internal competition. The keywords that seem to fluctuate the most, have numerous landing pages that compete for the same keyword. Since we sell the same object in many many different sizes, thicknesses and colors it only makes sense that we have the same keyword on many pages. I would love someone that is an expert in this area to have a look at the site and give actionable advice so I can stop the craziness. Do you have any suggestions? Do you have anyone that you’d refer for this type of job/consulting?
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Which page to rank for a Keyword? Home Page or Deep Page?
So, we have a situation where there is one particular keyword we want to rank for. We have been up and down over the years, at our best probably position 4-5, and now at 20ish. Thats for our home page of course, which the majority of our linking is probably pointing at. We also have a sub page which is optimised for that particular service. The term is "web design brisbane".
On-Page Optimization | | MauriceKintek
So as you can imagine, Web Design is in itself a service and we offer others. Should we optimise our home page for it and remove the sub page?
Keep the sub page because its one our services and optimise both?
Do some kind of canonical thing?
Change our interlinking? All our competitors home pages seem to be the ones that rank, and it feels and looks better in results if its the home page, but if switching up to our sub page is better im all ears. Also if our sub page is somehow hurting or leaking SEO from the home page, id like to know as well. Would prefer to not have to provide a link, due to competition but if someone wants to know we can always PM.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 -
Some of my pages have KWs in common and google is switching those resulting in rank loss, how to fix that?
Hello, my site deals with pictures you can download and print for free. Because people search for it I have several page with similar content. For example: picture of dog free printing image of dog free printing painting of dog free printing picture of cat free printing image of cat free printing painting of cat free printing Just as an example. Now after tracking my ranks I found out that google changes those sites in the rankings. For example for the kw picture of dog free printing the site for picture of dog free printing is in the rankings but on another day it is image of dog free printing and on another painting of dog free printing. So those Google is switching the pages for one kw some times and it seems each time it does that I'm loosing rankings. I'm thinking it is because image of dog free printing and painting of dog free printing isn't as well optimized as the page that should appear: picture of dog free printing. With the more general kw of free printing it is even more complicated. I get some traffic through free printing (just an example) and all 6 example pages are being shown in the google search results from one day to another and again it looses some rank each time. What can I do to stop this?
On-Page Optimization | | SeeSharp10 -
Can't rank for a target key word "penalized?"
I've been trying to rank for the key word "kayak fishing" for my site www.yakangler.com. Last year when I started working on the SEO for my site I was on page 30 for Google search results so like the 300th result. After tweaking things on my site I managed to get to the second page but have since fallen all the way back to page 25-26 in the search results. I'm wondering if I'm penalized for this key word. I can't figure out why my site is ranking soooo badly for "kayak fishing" Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | mr_w0 -
Need help with fluctuating ranking for a specific keyword
my website www.totalmanagement.com fluctuates for the search term: web based property management software I have been using SEO Moz for a few months now and have managed to get to the top 5 and jump around between 3 and 5. Does anyone have any suggestions to assist me? Long term goal is also to really target: Property Management Software But I am still very new at this. Thanks in advance for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | dgruhin0 -
Can Anyone Explain Ranking Drop?!?
Good Morning, I'm hoping someone out there can try and help me figure out what has caused my site to drop from #6 to #10 to #14 and now #19 for my main keyword.. ( My Site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e ) I am convinced that my site has the best/most unique content in this niche. Every other site uses the same manufacturer descriptions and info and i have added text to certain pages to try and give them more unique content. I believe that my site is very easy to use and navigate, and should be considered a great user experience... Any guidance or help would be greatly appreciated.... Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Prime850