Recovered from January 2013 Panda update - here's how.

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I currently run quite a few Amazon sites. The panda update struck one of my sites, not major, but still, it hit it. Here's how it was affected.

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.
#2013 #january #panda #recovered #update
  • Profile picture of the author G0nzalez
    Banned
    Nice info. thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author GuybrushT
    Congrats on your recovery, nice job! One of the most important steps in recovering your site is identifying what actually caused it to tank. Was it your content (Panda), links (Penguin), EMD penalty or something else? If you've been hit by Panda, then focusing offpage is useless, and vice versa.
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  • Profile picture of the author cagliostro
    Originally Posted by Icematikx View Post

    I currently run quite a few Amazon sites. The panda update struck one of my sites, not major, but still, it hit it. Here's how it was affected.

    - 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.
    Not sure about this. ALL my competitors have their "brand name" at the end of each and every url they have in their websites.

    So do i.
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    • Profile picture of the author Icematikx
      Originally Posted by cagliostro View Post

      Not sure about this. ALL my competitors have their "brand name" at the end of each and every url they have in their websites.

      So do i.
      I removed "Blender" from the post title. If you imagine, the homepage displays 10-15 posts, all of which contain the word Blender. Then, you have your own content for ranking purposes, which is optimized with Blender. The result? You have 10% keyword density for "Blender". Not to mention, the post titles are <h1> or <h2>, so it's considered spam.

      We're building long-term businesses here, not short-term disasters. All of my Amazon sites have been alive for months on months. They aren't something I just build and rank for 4-weeks.
      Signature

      Just got back from a #BrightonSEO. I was given room 404 in the hotel I stayed at. Couldn’t find it anywhere!

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      • Profile picture of the author zonkow
        Originally Posted by Icematikx View Post

        I removed "Blender" from the post title. If you imagine, the homepage displays 10-15 posts, all of which contain the word Blender. Then, you have your own content for ranking purposes, which is optimized with Blender. The result? You have 10% keyword density for "Blender". Not to mention, the post titles are <h1> or <h2>, so it's considered spam.

        We're building long-term businesses here, not short-term disasters. All of my Amazon sites have been alive for months on months. They aren't something I just build and rank for 4-weeks.
        All my reviews include the word "review" in the end of the title. So, can this be reason for a punishment?
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        • Profile picture of the author dreamtoreality
          Originally Posted by zonkow View Post

          All my reviews include the word "review" in the end of the title. So, can this be reason for a punishment?
          Very doubtful. All my reviews end in the word "review" and none of my sites were penalised.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Updating the old pages could have triggered Google to bump your pages back up the SERPs.

    I know a few around here don't believe in updating pages as SEO, but it helps, that's the whole point of news sites (freshness) but it doesn't necessarily have to be a news site/page.

    The thing you have to be careful with is jumping the gun after a page drops, sometimes a page will recover on it's own ($hit happens).
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    • Profile picture of the author davidfrankk
      [DELETED]
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      • Profile picture of the author Bambu
        I was under the impression that Panda was a periodic filter. As such, if a website attracted a Panda penalty and the webmaster addressed the outstanding issues that triggered the penalty, the website would not recover from the penalty until the next Panda update/filter rolled out.
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        • Profile picture of the author jxam69
          Originally Posted by Bambu View Post

          I was under the impression that Panda was a periodic filter. As such, if a website attracted a Panda penalty and the webmaster addressed the outstanding issues that triggered the penalty, the website would not recover from the penalty until the next Panda update/filter rolled out.
          ^^^This.

          OP - You didn't recover from Panda, you can't do that until the next refresh or update of the Panda algorithm.

          You may have recovered from some un-named over optimization penalty - I have seen some evidence in my sites that Google has 'turned up the dial' on internal over-optimization over the last couple of months.
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          This space will be awarded to the first WSO owner who can prove they make Million$ from their methods.

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  • Profile picture of the author kaposzta
    Excellent tips, thank you!
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