Link Velocity / Dramatic All Keyword Rank Drop

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mastermindmark

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Hi guys, been reading this forum for a year or so now. It is an awesome resource and I'd like to thank you all for opening my eyes to new tactics.

I've got an issue with my affiliate site that I launched (and domain registered) in March. As of last week (5th August) all pages have been dropped by 30-40 places for all keywords on Google. (eg. something that was 1st is now 39th, another keyword that was 9th is now 51st, etc.)

From reading a lot of posts here I've got the impression that this isn't too much to worry about, however I just need your advise.

I believe it was down to a change in link velocity. Below is the links / refering domains from the last few months. I may have overdone it in July.

Month - Links (Refering Domains)
March - 380 (30)
April - 610 (100)
May - 440 (60)
June - 340 (50)
July - 960 (340)

  • All my links are from blog networks or article sites using high quality articles that are spun only 50 times before I stop using them.
  • All links are contained within 300 words of an on-topic article
  • I build links to every page on the site (200+ pages) and not to one page / homepage
  • All pages on the site have very good on-page optimisation

So my questions to you all are:

Is this dance / temp penalty due to the change in link velocity?

In August should I build links at March - June rate (300-400 links) or continue July's rate of around 1000 links??

Any help is greatly appreciated and I understand that 500+ people a day ask similar questions as this!
 
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Maybe your site is a victim of the Panda update.

The best way to find out is to keep building links, and see what happens in a few days..
 
Thanks for the reply.

Just to add in an extra note, all of the pages are still indexed in Google. I've seen no decreases in the amount of indexed pages.

Does Panda just decrease rankings or does it deindex duplicate content as well?

So alongside keeping the link building up, I guess I will add more unique content to the site?

Does anyone else have any views on how I should continue link building?
 
mastermindmark said:
Thanks for the reply.

Just to add in an extra note, all of the pages are still indexed in Google. I've seen no decreases in the amount of indexed pages.

Does Panda just decrease rankings or does it deindex duplicate content as well?

So alongside keeping the link building up, I guess I will add more unique content to the site?

Does anyone else have any views on how I should continue link building?
Click to expand...

Panda does both - It devalues (and sometimes deindexes) duplicate content pages, and decrease the rankings of spammy-looking pages.

Yes, you should add more and more pages of unique content frequently to your site- G loves it!
 
I wold try to vary up the types of links you are building and see what happens. If they all come from articles with around 300 words and they are all in context, you may run into an issue.

Also you could try building links to the pages linking to you to increase their authority.
 
Thanks for the help guys, I'm pretty sure now its a Panda update issue.

I'm going to do the following things:

* Remove all duplicate content from my affiliate site
* Add a 200 word (page unique) introduction to every page on the site
* Continue Link Building at the same rate
* Up my Secondary link building to increase the authority of the primary links.

If anyone else has any thoughts on this please let me know.
 
I had the same thing happen to my affiliate sites around August 2nd. I suspect it was due to using affiliate product feeds combined with lack of quality unique content. Also I might have also had problems with link velocity. This happened to my whole network of related sites. They're all limited to page 4+ after being on page #1 & 2. Have you had any luck dealing with this yet?
 
mastermindmark said:
I've got an issue with my affiliate site
Click to expand...

First thing that comes to my mind when you say affiliate site means you have duplicate content. Are you using default product descriptions and default reviews provided by your affiliate, or is everything 100% unique?

If you're dealing with lots of duplicate content, your drops could be due to that.
 
Hi guys, just seen both of your replies. I've not had any luck so far.

My site is a 200 category page affiliate going after keywords such as red widgets, cheap widgets, long widgets, etc.

I was indeed using only affiliate feed content, so the steps I've taken so far are:

* Removed all duplicate affiliate feed text
* Added 150 words of unique content (paid for on textbroker) to EVERY page
* Halved the number of products being displayed on a category page
* Tidied up the navigation so it was a lot cleaner
* Continued with the same link building as before

ganja420 is sounds like you have exactly the same problem as me so lets keep in contact on this one.
 
btw as a side question, has anyone managed to get a site like this OUT of panda?

Just wondering whether it is worth spending the time and effort on it...
 
Mark by what I'm reading, Google apparently does these panda update checks every 4-6 weeks. So if you have fixed the issues by the time the check happens, you should be able to recover. Then again, Google has admitted that affiliate based sites may need longer to regain trust with Google.

For now work at cleaning up your site in every way you can, especially removing any low value pages. In some cases, a site may need canonical url tags setup.

Some people are even claiming that user metrics such as time on site and bounce rate are now applicable. Personally I suspect it is more about ratio of duplicate content to unique content on a sitewide basis. It is fine to use some duplicate content, but they want to see that you are adding value to that content.
 
You should watch out for any search results pages or anything similar that produces a lot of duplicate content all on one page. Sites that broke up that duplicate content with embedded reviews seem to have escaped penalties.
 
Good to see your reply Ganja,

I've also read about 4-6 weeks for a Panda sweep, hopefully we should see some changes early-mid September.

I've currently got unique content only on all pages (I'm going to keep adding to it as I go)

As far as canonical tags go I've got them setup on every page to avoid pagination and filtering perimeters.

I'm a bit sceptical about user stats myself, however I do have good bounce rates / time on sites anyways

Although my site is an affiliate one, all affiliate links have been cloaked so should be a bit better from this perspective.

What actions are you taking on your sites?
 
Well my whole network of sites got hit. So I've been trying different things on different sites. On one site I used robots.txt to block all pages that had affiliate product feed duplicate content. On another site I embedded product reviews between products on search pages. I will also be trying similar strategies on my other sites. Meanwhile I've been doing everything I can to clean the sites up...canonical urls, google webmaster tools errors, redirecting old pages and adding new content to all sites. I've even got one of the sites almost completely redesigned. Hopefully I can eventually turn these into quality sites.
 
I also tried a reinclusion request with google for 1 site, but that may have been a mistake. Now instead of that site just having an automatic algorithmic penalty, it also seems to have a manual penalty as it is ranked page 9+ now. It may have been better to just fix everything and let the bots discover the changes. Once I can honestly say my websites are quality, I plan on doing some link building from high quality sites only.
 
nice, let me know if you have any successes, I'll let you know how my site does too.

Anyone else got any actual experience of getting a site out of panda?
 
I would say that you need to improve the links your building to your site. Start building power backlinks vs. just straight garbage. Niche related will get you moving back in the right direction.
 
Hi Botwiz, this is definitely not the issue for this particular problem.

All links to my site are contained within contextual bodies of text (article directories, web 2.0, press releases, blog networks), I only use low quality link build techniques for the secondary tier of link building (comments, forum profiles, social bookmarking.
 
mastermindmark said:
Hi Botwiz, this is definitely not the issue for this particular problem.

All links to my site are contained within contextual bodies of text (article directories, web 2.0, press releases, blog networks), I only use low quality link build techniques for the secondary tier of link building (comments, forum profiles, social bookmarking.
Click to expand...

Well you might need to look into some alternative methods. Like high PR private network related stuff.
 
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