Upset, Lost and Afraid Post Panda...

[Ernie Lonardo]

Like many I was on a roll before Panda hit. I updated my sites regularly, did social bookmarking, submitted to article directories etc, the usual white hat stuff.

and like many, my good sites all got hit.

I was crushed! Ive wasted the last year or so by being afraid to try again! I'm completely lost and AFRAID to do IM again. I was making $700 a month from Adsense and bang my rankings all dropped.

I'm scared to invest my time and money again when quite frankly we have no idea what Google wants anymore.

If you don't decieve them with backlinks, you don't rank. But if you do acquire backlinks manually, Google doesnt like that either!

I know some people will say nothings changed, just write quality content etc but I dont buy that one. I tried that and I was making awesome ground before panda, I had unique content and many many pages yet that wasnt good enough for Google.

I need some direction. I need to feel happy again and work on a IM project and start making progress again! Because Ive been in a slump for a long time.

Really down, lost and afraid

[thatkeywordguy]

Try physical products

[JB777]

Hey man, don't sweat it. You're not the only one to get hit by Panda.

[paulgl]

Hey Ernie, you've always been a straight up guy.

Just get to work. Harder.

Dropping in rankings does not mean your adsense is done.

It just means you have to work hard at pulling your own
target traffic.

Buck up!

Do you still have your adsense account?

Paul

[sirtiman]

From my experience, Google now more like thing about:

1. Profile link authority, keep your name on author by or something that make your content safe from copyright. Stay away use dummy or spammy author name.

2. Happy visitors, give a lot of value of external links so their will be happy get referrer from yours. This is not just theory from seomoz but I've done it and test the results. If only little external links Google think you are greedy.

3. Multi platform backlinks, use different way to get backlinks not just article directory, forum profile or web 2.0. But use video, pdf, podcast, apps, etc. Use the untapped sites for get backlinks. It makes you more safe from spammy blackhat tools out there.

[Ernie Lonardo]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Hey Ernie, you've always been a straight up guy.

Thanks Paul, you've always been a great guy here too. In one way its embarassing after all this time still trying to make IM work, but its my dream I cant give up

Id love to get to work but I dont know what direction to go in anymore.

Originally Posted by paulgl

Hey Ernie, you've always been a straight up guy.

Do you still have your adsense account?

Yes I do have my account still. I love the adsense model but this Panda experience has made me reluctant to rely on Google so much.

[tiffanystewart]

Try to rank some youtube videos. they seem to rank easier then anything else and take less work

[yukon]

Diversifying traffic could have saved at least half your income. $350 is better than $0, while working on getting SERP positions back on track.

[IM Ash]

With all due respect Ernie - SEO as an exclusive traffic generation strategy isn't for the faint hearted. After every Panda update many SEOers are pulling their hair out and wondering why they torture themselves relying so much on Google for traffic. But it can be an addiction and many like myself take it on the chin and keep on trekking.

I had one of my sites hit that was earning $1000+/month - I lost 70% of my income from that particular site overnight and I was devastated for a week, but then I took action and got the site to rank again and it is back to what it was earning before it was hit. What softened the blow was the fact that I have many sites that earn well. Diversification is one way to lower the risks! Concentrate on more than one site. Target keywords and niches with varying competition and mix up affiliate marketing with Adsense as well as other monetization methods.

With affiliate marketing focus on buyer keywords like "where to buy an xbox" or "buy product name" etc. These KWs are extremely profitable and you will realize amazing returns when you target them.

I'm sure you are wondering how I got my Panda affected sites ranking again, this what I did:

I added 1000+ words to my already existing pages and linked out to various authority sites that would add value to my user. I have up to 6 outgoing links on many of my pages that provide further information that the reader will find helpful.

I then 301 redirected the old Panda affected URLs to a new URL on the same site. Thereafter I built backlinks from high PR blog comments to the new URLs and I also used a high PR blog network for contextual links to the affected pages.

It took about a month to get everything back to normal but it was an awesome feeling once I recovered.

If you have a tight budget for backlinks, you should look into a network similar to BMR that is completely free if you add your own domains with PR into the network. The network is called Link Authority. You can pick up PR2 domains on Go Daddy for as little as $12 a piece and if you add 5 PR2 domains to this network you will be allowed to submit 10 articles a day.

You should also learn how to find high PR blogs to comment on (if you don't already know how) as these links are still extremely effective.

You can recover from this but you need to have the right mindset. Failure is just one hurdle toward success but if you focus on the hurdle you will be blinded to the rewards that lie ahead!

Good Luck!

[GeorgR.]

I am sorry to say, if you were hit by Panda you did it wrong in the first place.

A worthy, quality site USUALLY is not affected by Panda...this includes Adsense sites.
If your "empire" was solely based on thin MFA sites or other thin sites, "pseudo review" sites and similar...well then the hit by Panda was your own responsibility...because you could have done better from the beginning.

[Ernie Lonardo]

Thanks very much Eleva8 appreciate it, I need to go to work but I'll definitely process your post tommorrow.

[cagliostro]

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

I am sorry to say, if you were hit by Panda you did it wrong in the first place.

A worthy, quality site USUALLY is not affected by Panda...this includes Adsense sites.
If your "empire" was solely based on thin MFA sites or other thin sites, "pseudo review" sites and similar...well then the hit by Panda was your own responsibility...because you could have done better from the beginning.

This is not always true. ONE of my websites was hit hard. It was (and still is) a website from 2004, totally legit, with daily new content added from me and the users, very usefull.

Not sure why we were hit, since the keywords we lost seem to dance every 2-3 days like crazy and have not stabilized.

Apparently a Bot is a Bot.

And yes, the lessons i learnt was not to rely only to google. That was mentioned a lot of times from people here but never took it seriously.

[habibj]

I think one of the main lessons that I am learning is that you can't depend on Google for traffic.

Also, I am not so sure that when Google makes huge changes to their algo some of the good sites in the index also don't suffer as well.