Was I hit by Panda/Payday Loan/Penguin?

[HashtagHustler]

Good Mozzing,

So, as some of you may know based on my previous post, I am working with an odd situation here. I have taken over an account for a company and the Main domain pretty much falls into the category of everything Google hates. I have suggested to the CEO that the practices they did before me were sorta in the Grayhat realm bordering on Blackhat but I need empirical data before I can make any drastic changes.

In May and June of 2013 Panda, Penguin, and Payday Loan all had updates. Our company has nothing do to with porn, apartment rentals, finances, or anything like that, but the SEO methods used were, as I said, questionable.

In June of 2013 there was a drop from 8,000 sessions to 5,000 sessions from organic traffic. If I switch over to all referring traffic the loss increases to 11,000 to 7,000 sessions. To me that seems pretty substantial. Not only that, but according to the data we have not been able to recover.There was a steady climb for about 5 months before the drop, and then now we are in this middle ground.

I have only been here for about 2 weeks, so the things I have been uncovering are pretty amazing.

Is that enough to assume that we were indeed hit by the updates?

[HashtagHustler]

Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness.

I have come to terms with the fact that I am going to need help on this one. I am trying to make a case to my boss for a "second opinion".

UPDATE As this window was open my boss called me in for our meeting. I explained the circumstance and basically his answer was:

"Give me a timeline of everything that needs to happen. We can't cut anything until we build anything (unfortunately I fear he may have stolen my sentence from my interview when I said "don't burn a bridge before you build a bridge")."

So we will go from there. I do think he is beginning to understand the severity. He made an analogy to the Corleone's going 'legit' in the Godfather but wasn't comfortable doing so until we had a plan to go 'legit.'

Thanks again everybody! You have all been a tremendous help!

[MarieHaynes]

First off...thank you EGOL for mentioning me as someone who understands penalties.  The crazy thing is that even though that's all that I do these days, I can sometimes spend several hours digging in to a site's analytics, backlinks and the site itself and still not be completely sure what is causing the traffic drop.  It seems that the important point that most are trying to get across in this thread is that you're not likely to be able to solve your problem in this Q&A.

With that being said, here are a few things that you can look at that might give you some clues:

-Have you checked in Webmaster Tools for any manual actions?  Go to Search Traffic --> Manual Actions

-Have you run a check for malware?  Run the site through sucuri.net.

-Take a look at just the organic non-branded traffic in Google Analytics.  To do that look at click Acquisition --> Keywords --> Organic.  Then near the right hand side click on "advanced".  Set it to exclude your brand name.

Once you've done that can you see a distinct day where the traffic starts to drop?  This might give you a clue as to which algorithm you were likely affected by.  With that being said, although Panda officially rolled out May 20, many sites that had Panda changes started seeing changes as early as May 17 and Payday loans was live either May 17 or 18.  Still, if your drop happened on a day other than May 17-20 then you could be looking at something else.  I personally think there have been some minor Panda refreshes in June, but sites that were affected were the ones who saw a big change around May 20.

If there was no obvious change on that date then here's a list of other things you can look at that might be reasons for a traffic drop that are NOT algorithmic:

http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/reasons-for-traffic-to-drop-other-than-penalty/

But, I want to repeat that it's often not a simple diagnosis.

Just to clarify your original post, there was no Penguin update recently.  The last one was October of 2013.

[EGOL]

I want to come back to something important.  I want to preach to your boss.

Search engine battles are won through smarts and resources.  Resources are content, user experience and promotional  investments that you have made in your website.  Smarts includes these things:  the knowledge, skill and ingenuity of a dedicated staff.

As I said above I have been doing this for a long time.  I don't know everything.  And, everything in SEO changes constantly.  The knowledge that you have today will be less valuable over time.  To continue building and revising  my knowledge resource, I read and participate in a couple of SEO forums every - single - day.  I read what smart people write every - single - day.  Two hours a day.   I don't have a large company, three or four people.  But that investment is made in continuing education.

Above I told you that....

You are being sent out to fight the heavyweight champ alone.

You don't want to do that.  If you have a consultant and make a few firm friends here then you can use those relationships to take a gang to your fights.   By asking and answering questions for a long time here I can ask lots of people who I have helped but who know things that I do not for assistance and they give me enormous immediate help.   You should start building this.  Your boss should understand that this is a valuable investment for his business and give you that time.

You are the guy who will be makin' the rain.

Companies who understand this have entire teams of SEOs who will be competing against you.  And, they will get advice from their consultants too.    Don't fight them alone if you care about winning.

[HashtagHustler]

Wow....

This has actually turned into a really amazing thread. I can't thank you enough... I'll keep you all posted in some way or another.

Thanks guys!

[EGOL]

Just to let you know.  I have been doing SEO since about 2000 and posting every day in SEO forums since about 2002.  I run websites that get millions of visitors per month.   I have seen and solved lots of different SEO problems.

Still, when I have to make any important decision, an important repair, a change in the site, or even if I am just looking for ways to improve.  I regularly consult with people who know more about these things than me.  I often consult with two people on the same problem.  Why?   I run a few sites but they do SEO on MANY sites.  Their experience is broad and they have seen many things that I have not.

I consult with at least one of them every week.  Sometimes two or three.  I am waiting to get on a call with one of them today.   SEO is a highly technical, highly competitive business.  Nobody knows everything.  One piece of knowledge can increase the income of your site by thousands of dollars a month and millions over time.

You are being sent out to fight the heavyweight champ alone.

Your boss needs to understand this.  Share some of the comments you receive here with your boss.  I am not trying to sell you anything.  I only work on my own sites.  Just telling you what I have learned to be valuable.

I give you lots of credit for coming here to ask questions.  As you learning and have questions post them here when people can help you. But, small questions about a single topic are the best.  You can get quick answers.

Look at many questions here everyday.  Subscribe to them so you learn answers.  You should read everything that penalty experts like Marie Haynes write.  Here is one of her sites and a good place to begin. http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/

She sometimes answers questions here in Q&A.  Read penalty questions going back to about 2011 to hear what might affect your site.  She has written many good posts on the moz blog.  Here is a simple one about penalties.

Your boss should read it too.

http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird

You will also find that people, even experienced ones with lots of clients and websites under their care will not agree.  Why? Because nobody knows exactly how search engines work and how they will respond to changes on a website.  There is a lot of guessing but different people guess about different things and different people know about different things.  That is why I regularly seek advice from others, here and in private.

Good luck in your work.

[KeriMorgret]

If it helps when speaking to your boss, know that I'm a Moz employee and do no consulting, and we do not have any type of lead compensation for when we recommend people on the recommended companies, and EGOL does not accept consulting gigs either. Neither of us are saying what we are saying to try to make any money off of you or your company, but rather to try to honestly help your company get the information it needs.

[HashtagHustler]

The problem I am having is that the CEO feels that he brought me on to solve these problems. He is struggling to justify bringing someone else on.

And yes, they are depending on these hits for cashflow. Thanks again for your input.

It is validating for me knowing that I'm not just incapable and that this is a legitimate problem. Seriously.

[EGOL]

I remember you have 1500 domains with tons of links between them.

You might have been hit by Panda or Penguin or unnatural links or just been throttled for spam or many other possible problems.

These are complex things to diagnose.  Anybody who gives you an answer without looking into your big bunch of sites, your historical traffic, looks at the content and links into your main site and examines your content for panda problems is guessing.  Doing all of this work properly and making a recommendation will require a lot of work, and still there will be some guessing.  A few to several days, done by someone who knows the problems of sites that have suffered traffic loss will probably be needed.

Some questions are too complex to solve with a quick Q&A consultation.  This is one of them.

If your company is depending upon this income to support cashflow, jobs and pay the rent then spending the time needed to get your own skills up might be much more costly than going straight to someone who might be able to solve the problem and get you on track.   Your current situation reflects man-years of poor work.  Will not be solved overnight.