I have 2 Directory Sites. One is Steady and One Got Hit By Google. I Need Some Advices.

First directory:

- Focuses on one city
- Has 250 primary pages, excluding pagination pages(page two, three, etc)
- Has no backlinks.


Second directory:

- More aggresive
- Targeted all states & cities in a country
- Has 900 primary pages. I stopped adding new data after it got hit by Google.
- Has no backlinks
- Got hit by the August Google Spam Update.



Do you have any advice on how I can recover my second site?

x191920 said:

the big difference may be usefulness, not backlinks. city pages with thin or mostly duplicated listings can look doorway-like

Click to expand...

How do you define "usefulness"?

- thin content. Yes, I have a few.
- Duplicate listings? No, I don't have any duplicate listings or duplicate content. 100%.

Remove or improve city pages that have very little useful information, a small number of strong pages may be better than keeping every page.