Google Penalising Pages?

[scottlucas]

We run an e-commerce website that has been online since 2004. For some of our older brands we are getting good rankings for the brand category pages and also for their model numbers.

For newer brands, the category pages aren't getting rankings and neither are the products - even when we search for specific unique content on that page, Google does not return results containing our pages.

The real kicker is that the pages are clearly indexed, as searching for the page itself by URL or restricting the same search using the site: modifier the page appears straight away!

Sometimes the home page will appear on page 3 or 4 of the rankings for a keyword even though their is a much more relevant page in Google's index from our site - AND THEY KNOW IT, as once again restricting with the keywords with a site: modifier shows the obviously relevant page first and loads of other pages before say the home page or the page that shows.

This leads me to the conclusion that something on certain pages is flagging up Google's algorithms or worse, that there has been manual intervention by somebody. There are literally thousands of products that are affected.

We worry about duplicate content, but we have rich product reviews and videos all over these pages that aren't showing anywhere, they look very much singled out. Has anybody experienced a situation like this before and managed to turn it around?

Link - removed

Try a page in for instance the D&G section and you will find it easily on Google most of the time.

Try a page in the Diesel section and you probably won't, applying -removed and you will.

Thanks,

Scott

[RyanKent]

When I perform a search on Google.co.uk for "W11171G2" there are 36 results total returned. Understand first that because we are using such a specific and unique search query, few results are returned and we can see every one. If we change the query to "W11171G2" watch" then 1.2 billion results are returned.

Also, I don't see the page you shared in those 36 results. I see two pages from your site. #21 rank is http://www.firstclasswatches.co.uk/red-dial.html, #11 rank is http://www.firstclasswatches.co.uk/products_search.php?page=8. There are additional results but I need to click "repeat the search with omitted results included" to see them, which most people are unlikely to click.

There are two types of issues when dealing with duplicate content. Google will very often index duplicate and thin content pages, but they are algorithmically penalized in the rankings. The "main" version of the duplicate content will rank fine, and the rest will rank significantly lower.

You are correct that many of your competitors have thin content as well. You should be loving that fact, not upset by it. You can step up your site and take top rankings.

[scottlucas]

Wow that's definitely a long post to chew on!

I appreciate the content issues and know that it is really in best interest to get them fixed ASAP, that's why we are already pushing customer reviews (sometimes with images) and on the popular products have quite a few. But obviously the descriptions have got to go.

I think the best thing to do, as Steve suggested at the bottom is to run various tests with changes and more content to see what works and then build more of the same content on the rest of our pages.

The main thing that gets me is the other pages that rank in the top 50, sometimes thin affiliate sites with even less content or value than our pages! Seems a bit fishy.

One thing I still don't get though is why this 'Write a Review' page shows up instead of the newly added (indexed) product page?

If you look at this particular example:

Search on Google UK:
W11171G2

This page shows up -removed which is probably the definition of duplicate content due to its form like nature (we don't normally let these get indexed at all but I let it slide so I could use this as an example).

Now repeating the search with -removed
W11171G2 -removed

I see first result as the proper product page as the second result behind write a review.

How does that make any sense when write a review contains no content whatsoever?

Scott

[SteveOllington]

Dupe content is pretty severe, enough to cause your problems easily... try that software, I found a tonne of dupes on a large site with it that we'd have never found without it as it looks for chunks of text and consecutive words and phrases with the body text as well as sidebars, etc...

[SteveOllington]

Ah, well spotted!!

Yeah sorry Jamie lol.

[RyanKent]

I agree. I did pick up one advance warning indicator. If you highlight any text and try to use the insert/edit link button but the button wont show as active, your post will be lost when you press Post Reply. It is the only way I know to detect an issue before it actually occurs.

PS. Jamie, sorry for hijacking your Q&A here but I am hopeful we have addressed your question

[SteveOllington]

Yeah I should do that really. It's strange when it happens, it's not timing out or anything it logs me out when it happens. So I'm logged in, I post a comment and then it returns me to the page but logged out with my comment disappeared into thin air.

It must be something to do with sessions and all that I guess.

[RyanKent]

even more annoying is when you spend a while typing up a response, click "post reply" and then it disappears lol

Please open a ticket with the help desk (help@seomoz.org) and let Nick know about the problem! Sha suckered me...err....convinced me to do such and I have been feeding them examples for some time. They are having difficulty reproducing the issue. The more details they gather, the sooner it can be fixed. Please include your browser version information too.

[SteveOllington]

Wow yeah that is something special!! Choose a Distilled conference in the UK, come visit us across the pond!!

Yeah I know what you mean with the spacings, etc... it can be annoying... even more annoying is when you spend a while typing up a response, click "post reply" and then it disappears lol. Doesn't happen often thankfully but each time it does I tell myself to remember to copy/paste into notepad next time but I always forget.

I wouldn't worry about the spacings, etc... too much though mate, with answers that to go above and beyond the call of duty like that I'm sure people aren't too worried about paragraphing.

[RyanKent]

Thanks Steve.

My reply bothers me because I can't get the spaces between the sentences to stick. I even tried on a different pc and the dang thing doesn't like spaces. Oh well.

I thought your reply was spot on and I thought to help out a bit with some specifics.

The "something special" was comprised of a few things, each of which I value highly:

• a personal congratulations from Rand

• a phone call with Rand where he certainly went out of his way to make me feel special

• an as of yet unknown surprise package which should arrive any day. I am hoping for a dart board with Roger's image so I can use it whenever the Q&A gets glitchy or a piece of software doesn't function correctly.

• and a complimentary pass to either MozCon2012 or one of the Distilled Conferences. Since I live in California and I love Seattle I chose the MozCon2012 option. I am very excited about taking this trip next year.

Cheers!

[SteveOllington]

Jeez Ryan, no wonder you got Oracle with posts like that lol... congratulations on that by the way!! I don't suppose you can give a clue on what the "Something Really Special!" is?? haha

[RyanKent]

Hi Jamie.

I agree with Steve's assessment. The issue you are experiencing is common amongst ecommerce sites. You offer a lot of links, a ton of duplicate content and the unique content on the page is very thin.

I picked a random product page on your site: http://www.firstclasswatches.co.uk/police-sphere-12778msu61-p-8083.html. I performed a Google.co.uk search for "police sphere X" and your site shows as the 35th result.

When I view the page there are a relatively few number of unique words on the page. The unique sentences I do find seem like they either come from a product feed and are therefore duplicated on hundreds of other websites, or they seem canned as if they are used throughout the site with the current page's product name substituted in the phrase.

Example 1 - "Buy with confidence

This Police Sphere X 12778MSU/61 comes with the full official Police guarantee against manufacturing defects. As a reputable high street jewellers you can buy from First Class Watches with confidence. We are an official UK authorised dealer for every watch listed on this website."

Example 2 - "Authorised Dealer

This Police Sphere X 12778MSU/61 is an authentic, never worn item, supplied to us directly from Police. It is supplied with the official UK Police box, instructions and Police guarantee, exactly as if it were purchased from a high street jewellers. As a high street jewellers you can buy from First Class Watches with confidence. We are an official UK authorised dealer for every watch listed on this website."

The two examples above are the main pieces of "unique" content on the page. If you were to count every word on the page, what percent of the page is exactly the same on every other page of your site? Count your navigation, footer, sidebar and everything. The main content on your pages comes from a 4-tab block: Why Us, Buy with Confidence, Return Policy, Delivery. That content is identical on each page with the exception of substituting the current brand name.

I like many aspects of your site. Your products appear to be high quality and genuine. You offer a magnifying glass which provides detailed closeups of your products. You have established social engagement, a telephone number, your physical address, etc which helps with authenticity. But frankly, your site appears like you can add another 10k products tomorrow through a product feed and not blink an eye. There is absolutely no warmth, no customization, no sense of quality within the content. It is just another e-commerce site carrying products. This type of site was designed to be penalized by Panda.

Some suggestions:

• More images. You offer 1 main image which is fine. People love images. How about unique images of a model wearing the watch in various settings enjoying life.
• More reviews. While you can't force anyone to leave a review, there are many things you can do to encourage it. You can send e-mails to customers who purchased after 30 days requesting a review, as an example.
• More specifics about the exact watch you are showcasing. Was it used in a movie? Do any stars or famous people wear that watch? Does it look like a watch others wear in a fashion magazine?
• Redesign the pages to where the navigation, sidebar and footer present the links which are truly helpful to your users. Examine your Analytics to determine which links are not used. You may be surprised. The content on your page should stand out, not compete for attention against the rest of the page.
• Your "Similar Products" and "Recently Viewed Products" are both examples of potentially helpful blocks and should be retained.

[scottlucas]

Thanks, we will try some experiments but I think there is something more severe occurring here.

[SteveOllington]

I guess you don't have to do the same with all pages. Just pick three that aren't performing that well, ensure they don't have extra link building over other pages so you know it won't affect the outcome too much across all three, and then make the on-site pages to see what happens with just those pages

[scottlucas]

While you're probably right, some of the pages we are competing with (especially on things like very specific model numbers) are absolutely terrible and yet we appear nowhere for quite a lot of them. We don't even appear for unique text even when the page is indexed.

You're right about the URLs for brands, they need to have more in them but we have some which are quite old for instance -removed, which has a healthy ranking on page 1 for Seiko Watches and we don't want to because of the risks of moving lots of URLs (obviously with 301s).

[SteveOllington]

Okay it looks to me like too many internal links off the homepage to spread your equity flow to the right internal pages.

You could also ensure the content of pages is higher in the source, make URL's more friendly by adding "watches" or something into the products as well as the brand name instead of "-c-24.htm", etc... and get another partial match keyphrase into the title tag instead of the same title tag ending for all products.

[scottlucas]

I've added a link now to the thread as I realise there's even less chance of sorting it out if I don't include one.

I think it has to be something else, I should say we have had problems with this since before panda, but maybe that has made it worse.

We used to have a page indexed for each product that was a simple form to add a new review to the product, it was essentially completely duplicate as the only thing that would change on the page was the product name.

Nevertheless, this write a review page which offered no benefit to anybody searching would show up in the SERPs ahead of this product page despite the duplicate content and there only being one link to it on our site (anchor text 'Write a review for this product').

Obviously when applying the site: modifier we still got our product page showing up as most relevant!

[SteveOllington]

Hiya, yes Google has always penalized pages not just whole domains... but you're noticing it now due to Panda and its updates. As you said you're worried about duplicate content try this: http://www.dcfinder.com/ I only came across it the other day but it's pretty good for dupe detection

There could be something else causing it though, lots of people are seeing the same thing as yourself... difficult to pinpoint the issue sometimes though, especially without the website URL