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OK, frankly I left some important info out. When I moved the site, I did it properly with all 301's in place. The few pages that did get a new URL structure, were manually 301'ed in the htaccess, where the rest was 301 to the same location on the new domain.

The 301's were not part of the problem. That's for sure. The new domain, gamblingsites.co, got indexed real quickly after moving the site, and after the first toolbar PR update it also got the PR updated accordingly.

Furthermore, the site started to rank decently. Not in the top positions, but still on the first SERP, and more importantly bringing some traffic too. Like I wrote in my previous message, this all stopped on February 1st 2012, and I can't find any reason for it.

In the mean time I have contacted web masters to update the most important links that were pointing to pages on internetgamblingsites.net, to make them point to gamblingsites.co. (Please note that OSE is not showing this yet, since it was only done in the past few weeks.) The past week I also build a couple of links from other (related) sites I own, mainly to mix up the anchor text distribution.

I don't think this site has a penalty or so, at least I didn't get any notices in GWMT.

So, I would like to ask again for some advice how to proceed forward. Or what could have possibly caused the site to vanish for its exact match ranking.

Thanks,

Giorgio

PS: The guide you linked to is about the same way I took care of my move.

So I have this site gamblingsites.co, which I launched about a year ago (I think.) This used to be internetgamblingsites.net (a domain I bought, but never managed to get in the index, and it appeared to violate the T/Cs after asking in GWMT) and before that the site used to be casinowarehouse.eu.

After moving to gamblingsites.co, the pages were indexed almost instantly. I kept a 301 in place until today as I had some links pointing to internetgamblingsites.net.

Now, until a few weeks ago, everything was fine. The site was ranking top 10 for gambling sites (8-10) and I had some traffic everyday. This site wasn't my top priority, so besides adding new unique content, I didn't do much with it. In each case no shady link building or what-so-ever.

On February first of this year, however, it lost all of its rankings, and I have no idea why. Much worse site appear in the top 50, where a sub page of my site appears somewhere on the 9th SERP for keyword 'gambling sites.'

Last week I started contacting some people and asked them to update my links. I also used my own sites (all on unique hosting accounts) to build some branded links, i.e. 'GamblingSites.co' and similar terms to down tune the exact match. I also decreased the instances of the exact match on the homepage, to avoid over optimization. Finally, I removed the 301 from internetgamblingsites.net, since the better links have been changed (or are about to get changed soon.)

Now, couple of days later... no changes, but it's probably to early to judge. My question to you: "What would you do next, to try to save the site and at least get some traffic to it?"

Thank you for your help,

Giorgio

PS: Feel free to ask for more information.

BOTW.org is a no brainer. These links do help to rank a little better, at least they do for me. Another one I should go for is Yahoo Dir. Both aren't cheap, but will help. Nevertheless, you will also need other kinds of links to maintain your positions, especially when your niche becomes more competitive. I would advice you to stay clear from cheap directory submissions, as these won't make much of a difference, if at all.

The reason I know for a fact its Panda, is that the site lost its rankings (and thus about 60% of its traffic) end of February 2011.

Since then I managed to get slightly better rankings by adding loads of content and rewriting some categories (with thin pages, and not too many sub pages) from the bottom up, however, I never realized I had the content I currently located, which is terrible in terms of quality, and has duplicates all over the web. Like I said, this content dates back to 2006 when I didn't have a clue about SEO.

It's not that the content will be rewritten, based on what's there. I just told my writer to write about topic X and topic Y and make it very informative, so I will go from bad to really good pages.

Moving the new pages to new locations and getting rid of the others "infected" pages seems the best in my opinion, despite the age of these pages and the occasional link to them.

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I have a site that has been affected by Panda, and I think I have finally found the problem.

When I created this site in the year 2006, I bought content without checking it. Recently, when I went through the site I found out that this content had many duplicates around the web. Not 100% exact, but close to.

The first thing I did is ask my best writer to rewrite these topics, as they are a must on my site. This is a very experienced writer, and she will make the categories and subpages outstanding.

Second thing I did was putting a NOINDEX, FOLLOW robots meta in place for the pages I determined being bad. They haven't been de-indexed yet.

Another thing I recently did is separate other languages and move these over to other domains (with 301's redirecting the old locations to the new.) This means that the site now has a /en/ directory in the URL which is no longer used.

With this in mind I was thinking to relocate the NEW content, and 301 the old (to preserve the juice for a while.) For example:

http://www.mysite.com/en/this-is-a-pandalized-page/

301 to

http://www.mysite.com/this-is-the-rewritten-page/

The benefits of doing this are:

• decreasing the amounts of directories in the URL

• getting rid of pages that are possibly causing trouble

• getting fresh pages added to the site

Now, the advice I am looking for is basically this: Do you agree with the above? Or don't you agree? If you don't, please be so kind to include a reason with your answer. If you do, and have any additional information, or would like to discuss, please go ahead

Thanks,

Giorgio

PS: Is it proven that Panda is now a running update? Or is it still periodically executed?

Thanks for the feedback. It's more or less what I was thinking myself. At this moment I do rather not undisclose the site's URL as I don't want to risk my competitor knowing that I am actively after his rankings.

I have a few sites that are outranked by competitors having hundreds of directory links and links from unrelated sites. Obviously I'am doing everything I can; on page optimization is superb, building good links as much as I can, but not huge amounts, taking care of fresh content whcih is of better quality than the competitors, ect. etc. But for one specific site I just can't get higher than #3 while my competitor ranks #1 and #2. I have been fairly succesful making sites rank well in somewhat competitive niches, but this is one of the things that keep bugging me. Sometimes I even feel like buying these type of links myself... But I keep telling myself that Google will catch up one day. Any advice is kore than welcome. Thanks

I don't agree. Link selling can be a very lucrative business. In fact I believe it's more the other way around. High PR sites attract more buyers e-mailing you requesting for links, and you they're simply willing to spent more, wether it's justified or not. And in terms of getting higher PR, which was OP's question, the answer can't be easier: get more quality links and keep updating your site. IMHO the PR game hasn't changed.

Manual is a no go for large sites. If someone knows a tool like this, it woul be cool to know which/ where to find. Or..... This would make a cool SEOmoz pro tool

There's no need to worry about the templates... But your content sounds 99% dupe across all of your 270+ sites. I'd start with rewriting the pages for your best converting sites and take it one by one from there. Not sure if this is in fact a manual penalty, are your URLs still apearing in the SERPS when you search for them?

Manual is a no go for large sites. If someone knows a tool like this, it woul be cool to know which/ where to find. Or..... This would make a cool SEOmoz pro tool

There's no need to worry about the templates... But your content sounds 99% dupe across all of your 270+ sites. I'd start with rewriting the pages for your best converting sites and take it one by one from there. Not sure if this is in fact a manual penalty, are your URLs still apearing in the SERPS when you search for them?

BOTW.org is a no brainer. These links do help to rank a little better, at least they do for me. Another one I should go for is Yahoo Dir. Both aren't cheap, but will help. Nevertheless, you will also need other kinds of links to maintain your positions, especially when your niche becomes more competitive. I would advice you to stay clear from cheap directory submissions, as these won't make much of a difference, if at all.

I have a site that has been affected by Panda, and I think I have finally found the problem.

When I created this site in the year 2006, I bought content without checking it. Recently, when I went through the site I found out that this content had many duplicates around the web. Not 100% exact, but close to.

The first thing I did is ask my best writer to rewrite these topics, as they are a must on my site. This is a very experienced writer, and she will make the categories and subpages outstanding.

Second thing I did was putting a NOINDEX, FOLLOW robots meta in place for the pages I determined being bad. They haven't been de-indexed yet.

Another thing I recently did is separate other languages and move these over to other domains (with 301's redirecting the old locations to the new.) This means that the site now has a /en/ directory in the URL which is no longer used.

With this in mind I was thinking to relocate the NEW content, and 301 the old (to preserve the juice for a while.) For example:

http://www.mysite.com/en/this-is-a-pandalized-page/

301 to

http://www.mysite.com/this-is-the-rewritten-page/

The benefits of doing this are:

• decreasing the amounts of directories in the URL

• getting rid of pages that are possibly causing trouble

• getting fresh pages added to the site

Now, the advice I am looking for is basically this: Do you agree with the above? Or don't you agree? If you don't, please be so kind to include a reason with your answer. If you do, and have any additional information, or would like to discuss, please go ahead

Thanks,

Giorgio

PS: Is it proven that Panda is now a running update? Or is it still periodically executed?

I have a few sites that are outranked by competitors having hundreds of directory links and links from unrelated sites. Obviously I'am doing everything I can; on page optimization is superb, building good links as much as I can, but not huge amounts, taking care of fresh content whcih is of better quality than the competitors, ect. etc. But for one specific site I just can't get higher than #3 while my competitor ranks #1 and #2. I have been fairly succesful making sites rank well in somewhat competitive niches, but this is one of the things that keep bugging me. Sometimes I even feel like buying these type of links myself... But I keep telling myself that Google will catch up one day. Any advice is kore than welcome. Thanks