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Crappy sites rising to the top

by liveformusic
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
For all of it's Pandas and Penguins, and the cautions and warnings cited in Webmaster Quality Guidelines, Google is still ranking crappy sites. My client (who has been in the home improvement industry for 40 years) has two 5 year old sites - one is for his awnings business and the other is for his window treatments business. We do very well statewide, but for individual towns, we are being outranked by a multitude of young sites (churned out by the hundreds from the same low quality lead gen company who is doing a clear knockoff of Home Advisor) ) that have no DA, PA, TF, CF or ink. Nada. All they have is a single 800-900 word article (copied/pasted verbatim from ezine articles and elsewhere), with the town name stuck in a few times. I certainly could set up a template page and optimize for every town in the state, but that is not my idea of a good time, and it would at least come under gray hat techniques. It just amazes me that a website could go to #1 (and in many cases, several sites of theirs rank on the first page) with such pathetic content.

I'm doing SEO for the last 6 years, so this is not my first rodeo, but sometimes I just don't know what Google is thinking.
#crappy #rising #sites #top
  • Profile picture of the author princetotem
    Sometimes Google takes quite a while to catch up and ditch these websites, I can understand your frustration.

    Silly question, (and given your experience I'm guessing you've already done this) but have you implemented all the techniques you can for focusing on localised SEO/have a localised strategy specifically?
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    • Profile picture of the author liveformusic
      You are right about Google taking time to ferret out these sites, because they de-indexed another bunch of .xyz sites targeting the home improvement niche sometime back, but it took months for it to happen.

      Maybe I'm being greedy because we already have a lot of great local listings for our region, with many #1's, being 1st in Google Maps, etc. So, to answer your question, yes I've got the local SEO bases pretty well covered, but I was looking at other nearby towns that these other guys had ranked for. I never begrudge real competition as they've put in the work, but quicky spam sites make me crazy!.
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Here's what so many people tend to forget ... Google has not run the Penguin filter for nearly TWO YEARS. Penguin is not part of the algorithm; it is a separate filter that they have to run separately because it is extremely resource-intensive. That is why you are seeing so many bad sites ranking high again. People have had a free run for two years to spam other websites with their crappy links, which are driving their rankings higher.

    The day of reckoning is coming soon. Google should be running Penguin for one FINAL time any week/month now. After that, Google has said that Penguin will be part of its regular algorithm (they have been working on making it part of the algorithm for the last two years and have apparently figured it out).

    The shoe is going to drop and many people are going to be crying about how unfair Google is soon and that their businesses that were built on shady backlink practices have become worthless overnight. When that shoe drops, you'll likely see that your websites gain in rankings while all the ones that are temporarily ranking higher that have used shady backlink methods will fall by the wayside, never to be seen again.

    By the way, the practice you mention that this other business is employing is against Google's webmaster policies. Have you reported the other site(s)?
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  • Profile picture of the author michaelkoehler92
    Don't worry you wont find that much long on the serps. They will get eliminated soon that's how google works.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by liveformusic View Post

    For all of it's Pandas and Penguins, and the cautions and warnings cited in Webmaster Quality Guidelines, Google is still ranking crappy sites. My client (who has been in the home improvement industry for 40 years) has two 5 year old sites - one is for his awnings business and the other is for his window treatments business. We do very well statewide, but for individual towns, we are being outranked by a multitude of young sites (churned out by the hundreds from the same low quality lead gen company who is doing a clear knockoff of Home Advisor) ) that have no DA, PA, TF, CF or ink. Nada. All they have is a single 800-900 word article (copied/pasted verbatim from ezine articles and elsewhere), with the town name stuck in a few times. I certainly could set up a template page and optimize for every town in the state, but that is not my idea of a good time, and it would at least come under gray hat techniques. It just amazes me that a website could go to #1 (and in many cases, several sites of theirs rank on the first page) with such pathetic content.

    I'm doing SEO for the last 6 years, so this is not my first rodeo, but sometimes I just don't know what Google is thinking.



    There's your answer for why other sites/pages are outranking you on Google SERPs.

    Google doesn't care about the things you think Google cares about.

    None of the things you've posted mean anything for SEO, it's just moz sales pitch (DA, PA, etc...) and forum BS (copied content, counting words, etc...).
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  • Profile picture of the author liveformusic
    **Addendum**

    Sometime over the winter Google de-indexed ALL of the bogus websites I referenced. While I guess I was just too impatient with that bunch, I'm starting to see some new spammy sites creeping in to replace what G took down.

    The never ending battle between good and evil.....
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    • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
      Originally Posted by liveformusic View Post

      **Addendum**

      Sometime over the winter Google de-indexed ALL of the bogus websites I referenced. While I guess I was just too impatient with that bunch, I'm starting to see some new spammy sites creeping in to replace what G took down.

      The never ending battle between good and evil.....
      And, just like the sites in the past, they, too, will eventually fall of the face of the search planet.
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      We help sellers get the MAXIMUM amount for their websites and all buyers know that these sites are 100% vetted.
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