Have we been penalised?

[SteveW1987]

I have run a site called getinspired365.com for the last few years. All it does is dish out a new inspiring video everyday. Recently we decided to implement an SEO strategy around the creation of quote pages. We have created 200,000 different quote pages (e.g. http://www.getinspired365.com/brave-men-rejoice-in-adversity-just-as-brave-soldiers-triumph-in-war). As well as this, we've created 15,000 author pages (e.g.http://www.getinspired365.com/george-washington-quotes). We initially did a small batch to see if we could rank for different terms such as the start of a particular quote or "person's name quotes" and fortunately we ranked pretty well - on the first page for a lot of quotes, and authors.

What we then did was release all of these new pages over the next week or two - so 215,000 pages. They've all indexed fine and we've received no errors on Webmaster Tools. We've not done any blackhat stuff and our domain is pretty solid having been featured by Techcrunch, BBC and others. On MOZ our individual pages are getting an "A" grade for SEO. We did this activity around 10 weeks ago.

However, almost all of these pages are not ranking anywhere in Google. We accept that they may not rank on page 1 but they're not even ranking in the top 20 pages despite our small batch ranking really well. Some brand new pages, weirdly, are ranking (e.g.http://www.getinspired365.com/andrea-bocelli-quotes ranks on page 2 and http://www.getinspired365.com/walter-sisulu-quotes ranks page 1). We've seen no real rise in search impressions within Webmaster tools - so it is as though there's a penalty on our site, but not on all of our site - and not on just the new pages.

I just wondered if anyone had any idea what could be causing the issue? Is it simply that we have released too much content too quickly? And if so, would you recommend de-indexing everything and almost starting again by just doing very small batches over a long period of time.

Really appreciate any advice you may be able to offer.

thanks,
Steve

[mememax]

Hey Steven, it's hard for giving you a 100% valid answer as we do not know your site as well as you do, but here I will try clarify your doubts with my PoV:

1. beware of the definition of original content. Google is starting to move away from the solely written by me = original = deemed to rank. They are trying to figure out which content is unique and also adds value to user experience. You need to try to provide content which is providing a meaningful addition to user experience.

2. care with internal duplication. the walt disney piece on the right looks like a boilerplate content which is present on more the 51 pages on your website (google search). Take into account that if you create an original piece and then you splash it across multiple pages of your website google may dilute its value

3. Panda is a page-level algorithm. Panda doesn't act on the site as a whole. Even before being integrated with Core algorithm it was clear that panda acted on a page-level basis, only after reaching a certain threshold the system may decide to rule out a site from google rankings. It's definitely likely that google may be discounting only the pages it feels that are not useful while keeping the ones that are adding a value. The cancer quotes list is a good list of quotes that may be not found elsewhere. You know better than we do which unique functionalities you ahve added to your website to assess which are pages that deserves to rank vs pages which are just a rework on already existing (onsite) pages.

I hope this helps you!

e

[SteveW1987]

Great thanks guys.

So a page like this - http://www.getinspired365.com/the-more-you-like-yourself-the-less-you-are-like-anyone-else-which-makes-you-unique - I guess is a bit better as it has some original written copy down the left hand side (around 200 words). So it sounds like you're suggesting I need to do more stuff like this to pad out the pages and to make them better quality.

One question I had - why would Google not just penalise all the pages? So if you are right (and I am not disputing that you are) why are some pages, with nothing on them bar a quote and the person's name ranking but some others not ranking. I'd have thought the whole lot would not rank? Also, some pages that have more in the way of original content (http://www.getinspired365.com/the-more-you-like-yourself-the-less-you-are-like-anyone-else-which-makes-you-unique) are not ranking vs some that have no original content but yet are ranking.

[SteveW1987]

Perfect, thanks so much for taking the time to reply.

So a page like this - http://www.getinspired365.com/cancer-quotes - has a "uniqueness" about it as I have written the copy down the left hand side (around 200 words). So it sounds like you're suggesting I need to do more stuff like this to pad out the pages and to make them better quality.

For some pages we have created our own bio's (for people) and "did you knows" that are all written by us - but again some are ranking, some are not. And some which haven't got either feature and literally just contain the person's name and their quotes are ranking. Having said that, we'll add more original content to these pages and see what difference that makes. Thanks again.

One question I had - why would Google not just penalise all the pages? Some pages that have more in the way of original content (http://www.getinspired365.com/the-more-you-like-yourself-the-less-you-are-like-anyone-else-which-makes-you-unique) are not ranking vs some that have no original content but yet are ranking. Thanks!

[EGOL]

**I would test this theory by picking a few of the random pages and adding some content that is well optimized and see how it performs. **

Great suggestion, Brian.

Put some real work into a few of these pages and see what happens.

[Andy-Halliday]

Yeah have to agree sounds like 'doorway' pages that are there to generate search traffic which Google doesn't like.

You either need more content on these pages, getting UGC would be one way of adding more relevant content to the pages

[BrianJGomez]

Cool site.

I agree, with Egols comment, I think Google is treating these pages as being low quality because there isn't much content on the pages. If you're familiar with worpdress, Google often does the same thing with all the hundreds of pages that WP makes for blog categories, tags, etc.

I would test this theory by picking a few of the random pages and adding some content that is well optimized and see how it performs.

[EGOL]

My bet is that Google sees these as low quality pages because there is not much text content beyond a quote and that same quote can be found on lots of other websites.  Google is looking to promote pages that have unique and substantive content that does not already exist on hundreds to thousands of other websites.

Although other websites are in the SERPs with simply a quote and some supplemental content, they claimed that turf first, are now well established sites.  Newcomers who enter these SERPs without unique and substantive content are going to be placed in the supplemental results or filtered from the SERPs.

Turf in the SERPs has become really hard to get.  You will have to do more for these pages to be successful.