
Recovered from January 2013 Panda update - here's how.
- SEO |
Main root domain (6k exact/month) went from #1 to #4
All posts went from around #3 to #7 or so.
All of the reviews on the site were 500-600 words of unique content. Also had posts with no links (around 7 in total).
So, when panda struck, I was pretty shocked to see that it had tanked. After doing some analysis of the site, I worked out why it was being penalized, what Google could be penalizing for, and how I can fix it. Here's the steps that I took:
- Each review title had my domain's keyword. For example, if my niche was Blender Reviews, then my posts would be called "Cuisinart XXX Blender Review". I figured out that this was plagiarizing the home page with tons of "Blender Review" and could be a factor. I fixed this and removed "Blender" from every post title.
- I went through each and every review and checked keyword density. I removed several keywords (the product's name) and replaced them with variations. So, I changed Hamilton Beach BB550 with "BB550", or, "Hamilton Beach". I kept keyword density at 2% maximum.
- I noticed that the category pages were using the default title, for example, "Hamilton Beach Blender Reviews Archives". I went and changed these to a real title, "Hamilton Beach Blender Reviews - 2013 Top Picks" and gave them all a unique meta description.
- Since Panda can take action based on ONE post only, I knew that one post could be the reason for my site tanking. After analyzing all of the posts, I identified one post in particular which would be considered low quality. I removed some links, added in some content and saved it.
- I also had the SEO Search Terms Tagging plugin on that particular site. I had it set to list 6 searched terms. I changed this down to 3 searched terms.
Now, roughly one week later, my rankings are back and I'm getting the same traffic as before. It's never easy to recover from an update, but it's always a good idea to go back to your site and determine which areas of the site are low-quality. Remember, Panda is content based, so it's something to do with your content. Also, one post can affect your whole site.
Still though, I'm a firm believer that it's because each review had the keyword "Blender" in the title, for example. In addition to unique homepage content, the keyword density for the homepage was sky-high.
Disclaimer: All of the "niches" and "keywords" explained in this post are not real. I am using "Blender Reviews" as an example for my site - the same principles apply though.
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