Hit badly by the Panda - What to do now?

[blackx]

Hey guys,

I'm in quite a bit of a problem here. As you have read the post title, my website got badly hit by the Panda update that rolled out on this 14th. My traffic has dropped by almost 60%, as it was heavily reliant on Google.

A little background information:

- The website is almost 4 years old.

- It has a lot of useful content. Mostly informational. But I have quite a lot of ads on it too.

- I haven't been adding much content to it for almost a year. The last time I added something was almost 3 months ago.

- I have not done any link building for almost a year now. I did a lot of it back then, which is why the website got a PR3 and ranked consistently for an array of good keywords.

Now, back to the hit. The hit has been mainly on longtail keywords, as that is mostly where my traffic came from. Of course my main keywords have been affected too, but they're still pulling in a fraction of the traffic. Long tail keyword traffic has fallen by more than 70% which is a big problem.

Now I would like to know how to proceed in this case. I just enrolled in College, so I don't have as much time as before, but I would like to see how to make this work as it has been a consistent earner for almost 2 years.

I can add content to the blog, on a weekly basis, if that helps. But, since linkbuilding is a time consuming process, I would rather buy some fiverr gigs or some other service on BHW.

Please give me your suggestions, especially on how to proceed with the link building process. The website has about 12000 backlinks from before, and not much of fresh links.

 

[FrozenSpade]

my main site also got hit for my main keyword

 

[janekk]

My 3 micro niche sites also got hit for main keywords and from top 3 I went to #10
What to do now?

 

[gu3sswh0]

I am also in the same boat, strangely it was my legit white hat high quality sites that got hit, and my blackhat sites continue to make steady progress upwards (go figure).

Ultimately I will be starting by doing an audit of the effected sites, determining any pages with what may be considered low quality content and rewriting it from scratch with native writers.

Short of this we have to hope google realizes that it is screwing legit sites! I am now outranking a 10 year old site where all on site and link building is white(ish) hat, on a competitive keyword with a 1 month old site that I did only black hat to!

Strangely, the latest panda has hit only my sites with adsense on them (which are also the legit white hat ones), so will be doing further investigation.

 

[Kris88]

All of my main keywords went from page 1 to out of the top 100 and are still not anywhere to be seen since the 14th. I too have only unique content and adsense.

I can only hope in the next few days they reappear at least somewhere in the vicinity of where they were, cause it is brutal.

I'm just trying to add some fresh content and do some link building and hopefully I'll get back on track. It truly is a hit when 80% of your traffic disappears over night.

 

[Ewokson]

Get back on the horse. Moping over a panda update won't help you rank. Keep adding content and do some backlinking. You don't need thousands and thousands of backlinks if you only do a quality backlinks. You could also try an automated service like linkpushing.net for your backlinking. I've had really good success with it.

 

[oneder]

Same here, all my sites took a hit especially 3 of them. Weird thing is that all had original, 700+ word helpful well-written content, no excessive spammy backlinking etc. It really makes no sense, so I'm hoping that things gel out in a short time 'cause it seems that legit sites got hit hard while spam is riding to the top?!?

 

[TheSEOWizard]

Did anyone of you have affiliate links in your sites which got hit especially Amazon, EPN or clickbank. That seems to have affected a lot of people since the first Panda.

 

[Kaithe.Clarke]

Well, the only key to survive Panda is get quality content,
Read this Panda survival guide,
http://www.keywordcountry.com/blog/google-optimization/rules-of-high-rankings-changed-surviving-google-panda-update/

Since, you can manage to add content weekly... Start updating it.

As far as backlinking is concerned, forget about it (just for now).... Once you are done with content addition, spread your content on bookmarking sites and submit your RSS feeds. If you are a powerful writer, you content will drive organic backlinks itself.

 

[kappa84]

Did anyone of you have affiliate links in your sites which got hit especially Amazon, EPN or clickbank. That seems to have affected a lot of people since the first Panda.

I did....pages with affiliate links were hit, pages without affiliate links are on same positions....Obviously, on the same website.

 

[LBrown]

Well, the only key to survive Panda is get quality content,

I wish people would stop saying dumb stuff like this. My quality content sites were hit harder than my MFAs. My autoblogs are chugging along like nothing ever happened. Google doesn't know what quality content is and they aren't getting any closer with these Panda updates.

White hat snobbery will not Panda proof your site!

/rant

 

[blackx]

Here are a few more details to my situation:

- I have not been hit by ANY google update before.

- I just embedded a few clickbank products like a week ago. But I've added them before, and then removed them and never saw a change due to them.

Guys, any idea on how to proceed with the linkbuilding? My linkbuilding has been stale for almost a year now. Could that also be one of the reasons for a sudden drop? The site is a 100% whitehat and has very well written content, all of which I wrote myself.

 

[Faith]

got my hit...
from #2 to 400...
this SUCKS!

 

[thelonewolf]

I got hit as well, traffic is down 80% on my most of my sites. Saw an increase in one of my sites traffic and rankings. My own thoughts on it seem to be page titles with the keyword in it. I have also seen my main keywords stay but long tail keywords take a big hit this update.

 

[Moayediyan]

got hit too.. from #6 to #13

 

[DamageX]

Well, the only key to survive Panda is get quality content,

Who defines what is quality content, you or Google?

White hat snobbery will not Panda proof your site!

QFT

 

[homenet]

I got hit badly, one site went from 800 uniques / day to around 200.. another site went from #6 to #70.. back to the drawing board I guess.

 

[livecricket]

For me it's not panda update it's bad update, all my mnf sites hit badly

 

[timshady]

I got hit badly, one site went from 800 uniques / day to around 200.. another site went from #6 to #70.. back to the drawing board I guess.

Did you have many affiliate links on the sites? I'm doing my own trouble shooting as well. I THINK this has a big impact and am reacting accordingly.

 

[Kaithe.Clarke]

Who defines what is quality content, you or Google?



QFT

Its your users who defines the quality of content (may be in shape of likes, +1s or with bounce rate)... All these factors are calculated for adjudging the quality of content a website has.