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Tip: Avoiding a Possible Panda Infraction

by Danny Woolard
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Panda's latest update occurred August 20th, 2012.

Many of my pages on various sites were hit as they are all new sites and Im relatively inexperienced.

Some were hit for too many affiliate links on the page, while others were not. The amount of content on the site was irrelevant.

My sites/pages hit the hardest had not just too many ads in the header area (above the fold), but also had affiliate text links inside the content.

My sites/pages that just had a lot of ads in header area were not hit at all.

I find this interesting, because the pages that had just one single content text link were punished if the page had a lot of other image ads outside the content.

If your site isn't too spammy, Panda does not punish the entire site. It merely punishes specific pages on your site (Google has said this).

I plan on doing more split testing within individual pages to try to figure out Googles boundaries by the next Panda update.

Note: two of my sites not hurt actually had 5 amazon text links above the fold, but outside the content, and another adsense image ad.
#infraction #panda #tip
  • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
    Hmmm very interesting....

    I have not seen any of my sites get effected by this latest update... Lets hope it stays that way :-)

    Danny
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  • Profile picture of the author DNAWRealm
    Banned
    I think Google only looks at what's inside the content. If it's outside the actual post, I don't think they penalise.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jim Hughes
    Originally Posted by denutza View Post

    If your site isn't too spammy, Panda does not punish the entire site. It merely punishes specific pages on your site (Google has said this).
    Yes, Google does not rank "sites", it ranks "pages". Of course, an entire site may be penalized in some situations, which affects all its pages, but that's a different story.
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    Never Give Up!

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  • Profile picture of the author rankwebz02
    Yes I think that if you have a unique content then it will be very profitable.
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  • Profile picture of the author ubuddyru
    hey, thanks for sharing your experience.
    I too have couple of affiliate sites, althu the content is unique but I am also afraid to add too many links to it in case it gets banned.

    how many links were there per page for the sites that got banned?
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    • Profile picture of the author seohallmark
      Google is always against referral link, back in 6 months, Google punishes my site by adding Amazon text link (Do-Follow) on sidebar. Almost 50% my traffic decreased. I recovered my traffic in one month after removing links from site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Danny Woolard
      Originally Posted by ubuddyru View Post

      hey, thanks for sharing your experience.
      I too have couple of affiliate sites, although the content is unique but I am also afraid to add too many links to it in case it gets banned.

      how many links were there per page for the sites that got banned?
      First let me say that it is probably good you're paranoid. IMO you should start with as little as 3 links on your page, then as your site grows, you can experiment.

      There are plugins that let you display different widget area content on a page by page basis...Get one. Then add another link to one page only (4 total) and wait a month or two.

      If you think your page has been hit, google "panda update" and see if google released another update that coincides with your suspected hit.

      One of my category pages, bounced back today, and what is interesting is it only took 1 day, meaning it wasn't Panda. But I stripped every single link out yesterday to see what would happen.

      My 2 sites that were not hit had:

      5 aff text links above fold, and 1 small image ad, then another aff image link in right side-bar widget area (wordpress).

      Then they had small article with NO LINKS. then in footer area, a repeat of the 5 aff text ads in the header, and 1 small image ad.

      So a total of 11 aff links, but 0 links in the content, and no penalty.

      This goes against everything Ive read.

      About 3 weeks ago, I removed the Footer area ads (6 links), and also cut down 1 header text link...For a total of 6 aff ads, just to be on safe side. Still ranking #1 and #2 for my keywords.

      Another difference is these sites use an exact domain name for keyword, so not sure if that lets me link out more to affiliates but I doubt it.

      Now the sites that were hit on last Panda release date, all had similiar 5 ad headers and 1-2 ads in sidebar...Some had footer ads too...The difference is they all had 1-2 ads in content (1 on top, and other on bottom)...So some sites actually had only 6-7 aff links total, which was less then the 11-12 of sites that were not hit.


      Next Im going to use only 2 text ads and 1 image ad in header, 1 image ad in sidebar, and 1 text link in content near top above the fold.

      My text ads in the header convert very well, that's why I'm so stubborn on removing them.
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  • Profile picture of the author Danny Woolard
    Update:

    Definitive Proof Panda cares more about in content links than out of content:



    High Comp. Keywords with 1300 Global monthly searches. Keyword=Exact Domain name.

    As you can see from chart when I launched web site it went to around 31 immediately.

    August 19th, the day before Panda, it went to #5 (That blip at #5 is Aug 19th date)

    August 20th, Panda update, it dropped out of rankings entirely (Until today)

    Yesterday I stripped out JUST ONE single in-content link.
    I left 5 text ads on top, 1 image ad on top, 1 adsense ad in sidebar.

    Today, back to #5 !

    This also shows that Panda must now store you're sites data, and not need to do a new Panda release refresh to update a site. This is just too big a coincidence.
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