How long to recover from Panda Update
-
Hi there,
I think I was affected by the recent Panda update as I had a lot of duplicate content for my product descriptions (about 300). I'm going through and rewriting these to be both helpful and unique. I was ranking quite nicely for a big spread of keywords, but have been seeing my rankings drop day after day since the update.
Is it possible to see my rankings improve again after Google re-crawls my site, or would a penalty have been applied to my site preventing me to re-gain my positions for sometime. It's probably worth noting that I have a lot of unique and helpful content, it was just my product pages that had duplicate content, but I've seen my rankings across the board drop.
Any discussion and insight would be much appreciated.
-
Weekly sounds about right. Dont forget to take a look at your places listings, and other elements while you are in the mood to update and improve!
I understand how frusterating it can be optimizing an ecom shop or store. Lots of pages, lots of time, lots of typing. Just got done doing a site that had over 3000 pages. Keep your heart in it, and you will see the results you want. I took a look at the site, seemed like you were going in the right direction.
-
Thanks Andy, and everybody else. I think I have a clear action plan to move forward now. Get the product descriptions unique - and written to be more helpful and better for converting customers, adding more to the blog (bit thin at the moment with just news rather than useful info) and creating great resources to help customers (+ giving the site linkable assets)
Many thanks
-
Hi David, I think I have it set to weekly. I was guestimating it might take a month for it to start resolving itself. Gutted really as I was just about to invest time in more content and outreach. Ohwell.
-
Once its all fixed, you should see start seeing changes in about a month or so. There really isnt any specific timeline, and all you can do is get the errors fixed, and resubmit the sitemap and use the "fetch as google" option in Google WMT. Sometime changes can happen in a week, all depends what your crawl frequency is set to. In your sitemap, do you have it set to daily, weekly, or monthly?
-
I would defiantly say its something to do with Panda
Your drop as seen on the graph, is your search visibility and while its not a great indication on its own, it still pretty useful. Your drop in % terms in the same as Ebay's.
Generally speaking people are saying Ebays drop is down to poor quality content, so if David is right about Matt Cutts saying its not affecting product descriptions I would take a look at your blog and add more content (however that does all seem unique).
I will still work on the product descriptions and making them more useful for the user, plus you win twice, higher ranking and more customer converting and they are getting the advice they need without leaving your site
-
Hi David,
I appreciate your input. I only made that assumption as the drop coincided with the update - literally the same day of the update after having massive gains for weeks (and months) prior. A lot of my rankings that dropped were for category pages and my homepage that are unique and actually quite useful for readers.
Do you think you could pinpoint the reason for the drop if it isn't due to duplicate content?
-
Thanks Andy, that's the app I'll be using.
I've seen a drop across the board for keywords, but not a complete failure. Yes this time of year is when I make the money. I've just started so put some of the fluctuations down to that too. Just need to keep plugging away at it I guess.
-
I'd be surprise if you were hit by Panda for duplicate content on product descriptions. Matt Cutts is on record saying it's not a big deal for ecommerce sites.
-
Hi Sean
I used to have a shopify store as well and there are plenty of apps, try this one I have used previously and liked:
http://docs.shopify.com/manual/more/official-shopify-apps/product-reviews
Investing in product descriptions and unique content will pay off in the long run.
I've noticed you have got some great content on your category pages (hopefully these still rank as its the time of the year when I guess you get a lot of sales) so its just the product pages which will require work.
-
Hey Andy,
Thanks for your response. Yep, you hit the nail on the head. Duplicated from the manufacturer to save time as I wanted to launch quickly. Invested my time in creating new content rather than revisiting my product descriptions. I'm pleased I'll be able to recover.
I will look to get product reviews implemented ASAP.
Many thanks,
Sean -
Hi
Yes it is possible to recover, but it wont be an overnight solution.
You are doing the right thing and tackling the issues of duplicate content. I think this update will have affected quite a few e-commerce sites as a lot I see always use the manufacturers description (duplicating content) usually for the reasons is easier and cheaper.
And good way of improving might be to ask previous people to write product reviews on the page. This is a good way of generating good unique content.
Not sure what platform you use or whether its custom built, but there is usually some good apps that will automate this process, sending emails to customers after a certain time to come and leave a review.
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 long does Google/Bing take to index
Hello we have 2-3 new pages being submitted every night to google/bing via our sitemap. Two issues I am noticing. Wondering if anyone else has same issues. a) 22 URL submitted via sitemap but only 1 indexed in two weeks. there are no errors showing b) If i submit manually using "Fetch As Google" and request indexing - the page gets indexed right way but after a day it seems to be unindexed - it will show up when i search (site:domain.com) but then disappear from the results doing the same search a few days later. Is this normal or do i have a problem that needs addressing? thank you
Technical SEO | | sancarlos0 -
404 Hurricane Update Page After?
Hi All, I am wondering if anyone could help me decide how I should go about handling a page i plan on removing and could possibly use later on. So, a perfect example is: Let's say a company in Florida posted a page about the stores hours and possibly closing due to the incoming hurricane. Once the hurricane passes and the store is reopened, should I 404 that page since another hurricane could come after? The url for the company is www.company.com/hurricane so this is a url that we would want to use again. I guess we could just 410 and name each url www.company.com/hurricane-irma & www.company.com/hurricane-jose for each new hurricane. I am just wonder what is the best practice for a situation like this. Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | aua0 -
How long does it take for Moz to discover links to pages
Hi folks, Our website is doing well in the Google rankings relative to our competitors who often have higher "Domain authority" than us as reported by Moz. I'm wondering how closely Moz's "Domain Authority" correlates with Google's. In particular, I wonder how long it takes Moz to discover inbound links. For instance our page at http://www.educationquizzes.com/ks3/english has many inbound links from pages on an outstanding educational website and yet our page authority is given by Moz as a measly "1"! Any insights would be very much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | colinking0 -
Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to
Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Liggins0 -
Best way to noindex long dynamic urls?
I just got a Mozcrawl back and see lots of errors for overly dynamic urls. The site is a villa rental site that gives users the ability to search by bedroom, amenities, price, etc, so I'm wondering what the best way to keep these types of dynamically generated pages with urls like /property-search-page/?location=any&status=any&type=any&bedrooms=9&bathrooms=any&min-price=any&max-price=any from indexing. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated : )
Technical SEO | | wcbuckner0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Why are my changes not being updated?
Last week, I was notified of having a lot of duplicated title pages. I've recently made the changes on my website with unique content. I went back on MOZ this morning, and I'm still notified with the same problems. However, when I check the back end of that specific page, I see the changes already made. My question is, why are my changes not being updated in MOZ? Does it take awhile for MOZ to recognize this or am I missing a step?
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
Rankings drop after Panda
Hi All, My site dropped completely out of the SERPS on September 27th. I've tried everything I know to do (re-wrote all content, disavow links tool, filed DCMA complaints, de-optimized on-page content, made anchor text less aggressive, etc). Can you all please take a look at www.doctorloanusa.com and let me know what you think the problem is and how much you'd charge to help? Keywords used to be: doctor loans, physician loans. I ranked 2 or 3 for those keywords consistently for over 4 years. I know I need more content, but I feel like it's a waste of time creating it. If a thin site was the issue, wouldn't I at least rank SOMEWHERE in the 1000 results? Thanks for your consideration. At my wits end.
Technical SEO | | Cary_Forest0