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If you are revamping the site, it is a great time to find out what you can do to improve your rankings rather than worrying about losing them.

So, I would have the current SEO review the site and report back on what can be done to improve.  Then I would make the same request of an SEO consultant.  Once I have their recommendations I would compare, discuss with them, do research and make a decision about what to do.

Paying the consultant is not a waste of money.  The price should be small compared to your potential sales increase going forward.  It is also education for you.

This process might increase your understanding of your website, understand what the improvements can be and feel more confident about moving your rankings up rather than worry about losing them.

On the subject of articles and pages that list headings of articles.. any idea on minimum text needed before something is regarded as 'thin content'?

I have a site with pages like that and was producing to thirty to forty pages per week (news items).  I had thousands of those pages and would delete old ones about once a year.  That site got hit in one of the first Pandas.  I noindexed those pages right away and the site recovered within a few weeks.    Now I continue doing the same.  The anchor text is two to six words that are perfectly descriptive of the content or something snarky.  Since the pages  are not indexed I don't think that they are a problem.

I have had some slight panda problems that I think was caused by some pages that I added to a site almost ten years ago.  It was a lot of photos with two to three sentence descriptions.  So, I noindexed them and will beef all of them up to  a couple hundred words and the really good ones up to 1000 word articles with several photos.  But, I think that a couple hundred words would be adequate - but nobody knows for sure.

Perhaps even pay someone a small amount for a audit that does not come with it the chance of further work for that person.

This is a really good idea.  First ask the guys complaining to point out real stuff that needs to be fixed or give you an example of a page with problems.  Then you have specific stuff to get opinions on.

My bet is that these complainers are simply picky code monkeys who can't stand work that does not meet their compulsive tidy standards.   It bugs them that they have to "think:" about somebody else's code that is not formatted or written the way they like it.

I am very confident that they would not like my code.

In each article we link out to two sources that we are writing about (credible sources) and we do one or two internal links.

This sounds kinda systematic.  If anybody is payin' you then you could have a problem.  If nobody is payin or doing any favors back then just stop linking to these other sites.  You don't have to.  Or, if you worry about it then nofollow the links.

I got an email today from a large company who we have written an article about in the industry and they have asked me to remove the link to their site.

Did you write the article without them asking you or paying you?   If that is the case then just take the link down.

If you are publishing articles for others with links to them on request, for a fee, or as an article exchange then there could be a problem.

Fristly, do they really have anything to be worried about?..

If nobody is payin' or doin' favors then there is probably not a problem.  But get out of the habit of linking to two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...two internal and two external...

See what it looks like?

but more importantly, with our internal linking, do we have anything to be worried about?.

Look at wikipedia.  On my site, I do the same thing.  If I have relevant article about widgets I link to it in the text of the article.

I agree with DJ123 that you should reconsider getting rid of the site.

I would take over this new site, study its traffic for a while and learn its true value.

Then, after you know the site, see if you can do anything to supercharge it.  It is possible that reoptimization could improve its rankings significantly.  These two sites might earn a lot more money separately than redirecting the acquired site to the new site.  Two sites on the first page of Google keeps one of your competitors on the second page.

Keep in mind that a PR6 site could be 100 times more powerful than a PR4 site.  So if you redirect a low PR4 to a low PR6 your gain might be as little as 1%.  Don't count on kickass results.

This is a time to study the opportunities.  As DJ says, you can rebrand and conduct business from the site.  Also he suggests not to use one site as a link platform for the other.  You can add a couple attribution links to reveal that you own both sites but don't go crazy.

Thanks for the details, Robert.  9th to 12th is a great age for this.

And, it is great that they have contact with your interns.  Maybe in a year or two some of your first code campers will be interning with students from their high school.

Keep up the great work!

I think that these interests are best when developed early - such as in K-12.   I think that waiting until college to recruit students into STEM is late.   Students should be introduced to it early so that when they graduate from high school they know what path they want.

To help with that I go to DonorsChoose.org once a month and sponsor a couple projects.  DonorsChoose.org is a website where enthusiastic teachers can propose a project and ask for citizens like you and me to contribute.  The staff of DonorsChoose.org review proposals, purchase the requested materials and have them shipped to the teacher's school so that you know that your money is spent as promised.  But, you should review the project too and support those that from your experience will give valuable learning to students.

A teacher who thinks enough about a project to write a short proposal, with a budget and articulates their interest in public is probably a pretty good bet.  And, since they must do this outside of their normal duties it is a pretty good bet that they are an enthusiastic teacher who goes above and beyond the minimum requirements.

you're much more of a recluse than I thought!

Yes!

oh....   TIL....  Do not make maternity comments.  Never!

If websites have good DA will be trusted as per Google norms.

I do not believe that this is true.  I think that DA and "trusted by Google" are very different things.  I think that some sites with very high DA are not trusted by google and penalized by google.

I think that links to or from some high DA websites could be harmful to your rankings.

I would like to hear Moz or Google respond to this.

I just ran KWD and got 44%.

After looking at the sites on the first page, I would not want to compete with them.

HomeDepot, Amazon, Walmart, Lowes, Sears, AceHardware, Kmart.....  Not only will the SERPs be really difficult to conquer (impossible for most people).... but some of the businesses ranking on the first page are more into the sports of runnin' other people out of business, beatin' down their suppliers,  and payin' their employees nuthin.   They value that stuff higher than makin' a profit.

When I see them sellin' really cheap garden hoses and offerin' free shippin'...  I know that it is a race to the bottom.    Good way to lose your shirt a couple different ways.

My idea of sellin' on the web is to find products that usually are not sold in these types of stores and building a biz around them.   If you go into Walmart and ask if they got jimmywidgets and the clerk says "huh?"... then you know you got somethin' that you can make money at on the web.

This is called.... "Surviving between the bomb craters."

It is actually a pretty common thing.   It is like people who drive over the speed limit all of the time but they just have not been caught yet.  They are simply "damn lucky".

So, I would not put much stock in improbable events.

Great.  Share a link to it here.  I'd like to read it.

Be sure that you share a link to the unspun version.

I'm looking for a good article spinner.

I think that they all work quite well with getting you in trouble with Google. 

Here is a Matt Cutts video where he explains why you need more than duplicate content.

Interesting to watch because you can see, just a few years ago, in 2009, Matt did not have all of the gray hair.  That is what all of this Panda and Penguin stuff has done to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z07IfCtYbLw

Michaels comments made me think twice.

I ALWAYS have to think after reading Michael's stuff.   I usually enjoy it, but sometimes I don't understand it.  I think he is smarter than me.  

I've noticed that the item count is appearing at the beginning of the meta description for our brand pages

OMG!  You have discovered how to do this???

Please write your secret up and submit it as a YouMoz post.

I wanna know how to make that happen.   I want searchers to say... Holy Shit..... EGOL has 75 kinds of widgets in his store!.... and click in immediately!

This is so valuable!

But who is' right Rand or Michael?

Your question should have been:  "Who WAS right?".... and today what they thought back then doesn't mean Jack.

And for today and tomorrow, nobody knows how Google will be counting two links on a page.

So, the answer to your question is..... "Pay your money and take your chance.  But if you do what makes sense for your visitors then at least you are doing right by them."

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I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages.  I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first.

The content of your blog should be meaningful stuff for the visitors of your website and your customers.   If you can't do that then why are you in business?   Anybody who is blogging blather is an idiot and should get out of the business.  If you see SEOs recommending this on their blogs or posting blather on their blogs please link to them here so we can howl and laugh. 

Hundreds of other sites are using the same content.

The same product descriptions that you are using appear on Heavyweight sites like... NewEgg, Yahoo Shopping, Ebay.

Get rid of ALL of that content written by other people.

Write original content or die.

So it doesn't look like Google is penalizing them, and are actually rewarding them.

I agree.

I think that most of the time, Google will filter pages like these.  Some of the time the entire website will be reduced in rankings.

But, sometimes stuff like this will get good rankings, and those good rankings might persist for a long time.

If a person decides to place that type of content on his website, he should know that it will probably have a short life in Google's search results and might cause his site to be penalized.

I would call it spam.   Very low quality spam.

From what I have seen, Google has been killing pages like these for about ten years.

Pages like these usually are indexed and persist in the SERPs for a short time.  But, then they are filtered from display or their websites are hit by panda within a few weeks to a few months.   Occasionally they persist but are almost always filtered or the entire website penalized.

You can have a great, fantastic website and then add a few folders of pages like these and see your rankings go into the tank.

I don't know.

A good decision would require me to understand the content history, SEO history, and technical history (CMS, htaccess, canonical) of both domains.  I would need study the site and talk with all of the people who have done these things and compile that history as it occurred through time.   I would then get technical advice from a consultant who really really knows the technical details and be willing to pay them for research and study.

That history would be only as good as what the people who did the work were willing to share and could remember.  I would not be comfortable with that information, because, the people who did the work have methods and views that are very different from mine.

One thing that I can say with certainty.  When I was done with this site the ecommerce pages would be reduced to product pages and a very small number of category pages.  That is all.

Would that fix the problem?  I don't know, because I would worry that penalties and technical problems in the history of the site still hang over it.

My concern is that the number of these scraped and spammy links is getting close to the number of good links.

I agree.  Some of my content is related to commodities and investments and those pages can be linked to from thousands of these crap sites.

In my opinion, most webmasters are not looking at their backlinks and if Google started slapping people down for these types of links there would be very few sites left standing.

So, I am not worrying about them.

Is this normal?

Lots of people run scrapers and use the data to make phony directories and mash-up pages.  They mostly have keyword links to websites and bits of content (kinda like Google

My sites all have lots of these links.  I am not doing anything about them.  I think Google understands how these sites are made.  

If you have a high quality site, a good linkbuilder might be helpful.

If you have a crap site then you really need a magician.

So, look at your site before you place any blame for doing a poor job.

Once I get to the point that I would not do something on my own sites.  I am unable to give further advice.

Try it and see what happens if you think this is a good thing to do.   I don't.

I have no opinion on this.  It might work, it might not.  I would not do this on any of my sites.

I think you are starting with a small amount of seed content and spreading it very thin through many pages.  I can't imagine how this would produce a good experience for users.

I have added large numbers of pages to websites and the result of that has often been a decrease in rankings even if the content was golden.  Why?  As Dr. Pete says... the authority and link value of your site gets spread out into a larger number of pages.

If you add an enormous number of pages and have a puny amount of links delivering spider activity to your site, google will start to forget your deep pages if they are spidered infrequently.   If you add 10,000 new pages then you better have a few dozen permanent links of about PR4 or PR5 hitting nodes located deep within that mass of 10,000 pages.  That will force a constant stream of spiders deep into those pages and they will have to chew their way out to escape, indexing pages as they go.  Remove those links and the stream of spiders stops and google might forget those pages if they are on a site of less than moderate strength.

The only way that you get your rankings back after adding a huge mass of pages is if your content is engaged, shared, and linked enough to earn it back.   Every page on your site adds a bit of weight, it has to be supported with authority.

Huge powerful sites, even those with lots of very high quality, highly engaged content, can be hit by Panda.  I had a bunch of republished and thin pages on one of my sites and it lost rankings in a Panda update.  I deleted lots of those pages and noindexed others and rankings came back.

If the number of pages on this website increases to 10,000 can that decrease its domain authority or affect it in any way?

Are you adding gold or crap?    Gold?    Crap?

I see that the link in my post above is not working...

If you grab almost any string of text from a product description and search for it in quotes you will get a page with about 10 search results...  here is a string of text....

"Close the door to the wind and rain and brew up this all-natural, gingery, lemony brew to sweep you"

Then at the bottom of the search results page you will see....

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 8 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

If you click the link it will show you 51,000 pages that have been omitted... Click a few pages deep, most of them are from teapigs.com.

If you grab any other string of text from any other product description you will likely see another 50,000 pages... etc etc etc.

Simply eliminating these pages might not solve the problem.  Somehow they are being crawled.  So their must be links to them somewhere.

There

Here is one of those pages...

http://www.teapigs.com/+gifts_for_him/+detox_teas/+rubbish?sort=price_asc&searchterm=&page=1&layout=list

They are being indexed by google.  They are not about a single product.  They look like they are being produced by the software that runs the site.  These pages are either an accident or they are spam.  Google will view them as spam.

If this was my site they would be removed ASAP and I would get away from blubolt for making a site with thousands of pages like this with duplicate content, duplicate title tags and allowing them in the index and putting a followed sitewide link in my footer.

There is a canonical tag on each page that points to the most authoritative version of the page.

In my opinion, pages like should be eliminated.  It does not matter what type of tag is on them.

If this was my site, those pages would be gone and I would have get someone else to work on the website.    Nobody should have thousands of pages like that in the google index.  Those pages are dead weight. Google hates them with a vengeance.  They should be blocked from the google index.  I don't like the followed site-wide link to the developer  in the footer.

Just saying what I would honestly do if this was my site.

So, when I try to visit the .uk site I am redirected to the .com.

When I visit the .com and grab sentences from the content I see results like this....  56,800 pages with that sentence and LOTS of them with the same "All products | teapigs USA" title tag.... and some old "All products | teapigs" pages from the .uk site still surviving.

So, just from a quick look (which ain't nearly what should be done) I am thinking that this site has many thousands of pages that are simply mash-ups of products causing a huge duplicate content problem.

And, since I don't know what was on .uk in the past, if it had a penalty, if it was cross-linked... I can't say much with confidence about other deadly problems that this site could have.

If this was my site I would kill those mash-up pages and get back to the old-fashioned one page per product format.

I bet content on that topic would be good linkbait.

Forums take a LOT of work.  If they want the forum to be successful and reflect well on the company then they should put it on the main domain where their name is on the line and all of their clients will see it and have an opportunity to check it out and use it regularly.

If they are not serious about this then just put the forum in an outhouse where nobody will see it.  It's going to die because they are not dedicated to it.

I've seen Ebay take this kind of hit in the past.  Then, after Google settled down, new auction pages began to appear.

I think that Google is playing with stale data because I see old versions of recently changed title tags.  With so many pages on ebay being ephemeral, I bet Google deleted them temporarily.  But, who knows what they are doing?

If I was going to guess, this is a topic-sensitive update.   Strengthening the rankings of sites that are all about something and demoting sites that are a little about everything.

Ebay has taken major hits in all of my SERPs.

Retail sites with substantive informative content are up with double listings.... showing product page and informative article about that topic displayed together in the SERPs.

Match the title to valuable queries.  (toss all dead weight overboard)

Match the description to the strongest selling points (what people want to do/see/buy/etc there in this case).  Keep in mind that query words in the description will be bolded.

STOP.

You need a content development plan.

You are under attack and you have limited ammunition and only moments before you are overrun.  Don't waste your precious ammunition and time shooting into the air or into the ground.  Be sure that you are hitting the enemy!

Content that is never searched can be important, but only when it serves a purpose for someone who is important to your business and you guide them to it on obvious paths.

There are more of these than you have time to chase.

Improve your own site and forget about this is the best use of your time.

These are usually businesses who have robots that crawl the web, grab sentences, grab images, grab URLs and slap them together onto a website.

They often have crappy programmers that screw up the format of the site or make other errors.  One error is miswritten URLs that hit error pages on your site.

This is a common problem.  All of my sites have these types of links.

Cussing provides some relief.

Weasel businesses with incompetent programmers.

Not much you can do about it, unless you want to go to China and grab them by the tie.

Thanks!

Yes, that is interesting.  Strange.

Here is a text grab from the "products" section of that page....

SQL Sentry Performance Advisor is packed with ground-breaking features that are

When I search google for that text string in quotes.... the only thing that is found is a scraper and your adwords.

I converted some pages to one of these fancy pants formats and my longtail traffic into those pages tanked.

Only robots who don't buy anything.

Yes, that is better.... but you will only be able to do it on websites that tolerate unpaid advertising.

lol... That is a lot better than mine.

Try it.   I bet you get great CTR.

Let us know how it works!

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