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
-
Good CTAs for Meta-Descriptions: Direct, Indirect, Narrow, Broad?
It is no secret that good meta descriptions should be written to incite the searcher to click on the result without misleading them. Time and again I read that there are measurable effects by including "strong" CTAs (calls to action). What constitutes a call to action seems by some to be taken really narrow (i.e. "Click here to learn more!" - a very specific action that is spelled out) and by others rather broadly ("... Offer available till December 31" - only implicit, the action [buying/securing] not even mentioned). I now wondered: Many "guides" still recommend rather blunt calls like "Click here", "Read more", "Discover how". Personally I find those really unattractive and often a waste of space. However, I am not the benchmark and favour the informational side perhaps a little too strongly. Do those direct but general CTAs really work well in every case* or should one be more elaborate/indirect? I am looking forward of hearing your experience/opinion! Nico Yes, of course it is "test, test, test" and to some degree each case is different; looking for general patterns, though 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | netzkern_AG0 -
How to hide element without affecting SEO listing
I have a problem I would like to remove header from normal page flow as I already have same information copied in CTA box but I need this header for SEO, is there a way to remove this header from a document flow without being blacklisted by google?
On-Page Optimization | | tesdublin0 -
Have you seen an increase in your Rankings after improving your TTFB rate?
After reading the Post by ZOOMPF http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte I was wondering if any of you have optimized your TTFB and noticed improvements in rankings. Have you optimized and not noticed any differences?
On-Page Optimization | | JMacSupply0 -
Ranking report problem
Hello, I have two things that I'm a little concerned. Ranking report is not working because all these keywords were on google first page but the report is showing the calendar sign
On-Page Optimization | | angeloweiCrawl results, I just went from 5000 warnings and errors to 4 in two weeks. It seems a little crazy
0 -
What is important for page rank?
I have heard quality is the most important factor for page rank but after the 7 Nov 11 PR update I am no longer a believer. The PR on my home page dropped from 4 to 3 and the rest of my inside pages remained the same even though I have added a significant amount of content since the previous update and kept it fresh. Any thoughts on this most recent PR update?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340 -
We dropped from a page rank of 4 to 3
We dropped from a page rank of 4 to 3 because of the Google Freshness update. Are there any insights anyone can give me? Our site is www.totalvac.com
On-Page Optimization | | totalvac0 -
Page Rank Drop
Just trying to get more feedback - so we recently edited title and meta descriptions for existing website SEO and we've noticed in the past several weeks, our client's website has dropped out of the top 50 in a variety of terms we were targeting that they used to show up for (note: when updating SEO, we DID NOT remove any relevant terms we were targeting). When the website does come up in searches, it is the old meta description and title. So far, the feedback we've gotten is that first, it takes Google a few weeks to recrawl and index - however, we are now on week 3 after the changes and still no rebound in rankings. We were also told to check with the SEO Moz page grader to be sure the keywords were being optimized correctly - got As and Bs for the test terms I tried. We also submitted an XML site map to speed up the crawl process as another user suggested. We've tested the site with various tools to make sure there are redirect errors, etc. and everything looks fine. Again, it's now been 3+ weeks and no ranking rebound. Any other suggestions on what could be happening?
On-Page Optimization | | laidlawseo0 -
Are a lot auf tag-sites in the index a bad signal for low quality? (Panda Update)
Hello everybody, first of all please excuse my bad english. I'm from Germany - I try my best. 😉 The case: I have a Wordpress SEO project which rankings very well. A this moment I have all "archive sites" like "archive", "category" und "tags" indexed. I use the more-Tag for every archive/category/tag site - so duplicate content ist not really a problem, but in view of the Panda Update, which surely arrives in Germany soon, I wonder if all this Tag/Archive/Category Sites in the index maybe seen as low quality und can hurt the ranking of my whole site. Low quality because: With using the more-tag the site are just a list of internal links with content snippets. I have 500 articles und 700 Tag Site (all in the index). So my fear is when google (with Panda Update) looks at my site und sees all this (maybe) low quality tag-sites in the index I get penalised because there is not a good proportion between my normal (good quality) Articles und the archive/tag sites. I hope you guys can understand my thoughts. Do I have a legitimate fear that the mass of tag-site in the index could be problem? Are there any data from the USA, how blogs mit Tag-Site in the Index rank after the Panda Update or if sites which contains of internal Links mit content snippets - like these tag site - are low quality in Google eyes? Or I'm worring to much? Thank you very much! Oliver
On-Page Optimization | | channelplus0