Panda updates - your strategy?

[fish]

Along with loads of others I've lost of few number one positions in goog serps, some sites have remained on p1 but have been demoted to number 3 to number 9. Other sites where I enjoyed the p1 placement now are on p2 - p5.

I'm debating what strategy I should embark upon to try and get them to previous levels. This is my current thinking (in rough order of importance)

1 Bounce rate - bit of a sh*t this one since I'm happy for my visitors to land on site then go via link straight to aff merchant. I believe however goog will see this differently and mark it as a ' non interesting / relevant site ' as the visitor just moves offsite without going any deeper into it.

2 Content - Am aware that quality content is necessary however what's the point of writing stuff to bulk out your site with copy that you don't even know your site visitors will find useful?

3 Links - I never do link building, it's tedious, repetitive and when I did try it a few times 10% successful. I get bored with that sort of work & I don't know of any reputable, inexpensive people to do it for me. ?

4 usability - I Like to think my sites are user friendly and simple to use. No cloak and dagger stuff. However I'm always building new templates that I think look / work better so that's ongoing.

How are you guys approaching it? are you already tweaking or waiting for things to cool down a little?

Fish

 

[wb]

With regards to bounce rates, what are yours looking like?

Not sure if you use Analytics and received the receive benchmarking report email, but the average UK stats are:

Pages/Visit: 4.9
Bounce Rate: 41.5%
Avg. Time on Site: 5 mins 38 secs

 

[fish]

With regards to bounce rates, what are yours looking like?

Not sure if you use Analytics and received the receive benchmarking report email, but the average UK stats are:

Pages/Visit: 4.9
Bounce Rate: 41.5%
Avg. Time on Site: 5 mins 38 secs

just took a little look and some sites = or better however most are worse than the above .......

maybe I'll add some youtube vids, also invoke a product review feed for some of the sites that may keep them on there longer, who knows?

 

[wb]

Definitely work on link building. Depending on how good your websites are at the moment, I would probably do that first as it should make the biggest difference and get you ranking higher again (if it was ranking well before with all other things being equal). Once it's back and earning, invest profits into the other areas to make it sustainable. This is obviously just one way to do it.

 

[retired_member21]

Have lost quite a few internal pages rankings for some very decent phrases on one site - have dropped for phrases which were positioned 2/3 to around 7/8.

I just think there's been a mass de-valuation of previous lower quality links - however bounce rate is definitely something I'll be looking into as running G analytics you can compare rankings vs bounce rates (if you have historical rankings)

 

[aaclapham]

My sites used to be get them in and ship them out, however Google is defiantely penalising that. I have now split my links to 50% affiliate and 50% internal to useful resources.

The old way was the best for sales, however to survive you need readers to stay on your sites longer.

Link building is still a must although I go for quality links rather than quantity.

Finally you need to create a buzz about your site through the various social media platforms.

 

[BST]

Like they site just make a better site/better user experience.

More relevant content which is easy to find, some useful tools and etc.

Think about it, when users stick around this builds a little bit of trust and when they follow your aff link they are more likely to convert because you recommended that product. So it's a win-win situation.

Also making users happy can bring you some organic links over the time.

 

[boxfish]

Saw this whiteboard friday vid recommended on a4u and it seems to sum it up:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-goog...-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard-friday

I think it is a move in the right direction in terms of quality, but I think it will mean many people move away from developing site after site and focus more closely on a few bigger ones.

 

[Frog]

1 Bounce rate - bit of a sh*t this one since I'm happy for my visitors to land on site then go via link straight to aff merchant. I believe however goog will see this differently and mark it as a ' non interesting / relevant site ' as the visitor just moves offsite without going any deeper into it.

I don't think bounce rate harms you at all. If someone wants a Comet discount code and you provide them one off the first page they land on, thats a better user experience than sending them around multiple pages looking for something that simply isn't there.

Its the same if they want a train timetable, top speed of a car, or any other random fact that can be instantly answered. I would say what could damage you is someone clicking through to your site from Google, then immediately going back to Google and clicking other results or modifying their search. Thats a pretty clear indication your site wasn't a good match for that search phrase.

 

[uglygit]

Panda tickled, slapped and then punched me. I went from Alexa (not accurate I know) 40k to 97k

What I found is ...

Dupe content will get you, manufacturer listings text like on your fishing page needs to be unique or add sufficient boilerplate text to drown out the dupe content noise.

If you are going to rewrite you own stuff then get something in place to stop scrappers from grabbing your page content.

If you don't want to do link building bolt on a rss feed BUT put boilerplate crap in there NOT your original content and then rewrite it through feedburner and possibly submit it to a few rss directories.

god it's been ages since I've been on here.

 

[DomainMagnate]

I checked some of my sites which were affected by panda and others which weren't and I think it's mostly about links vs content relations. More deep links from authority sites and better quality content usually do the trick. Lots of articles on similar keywords cn do some harm also.

 

[theonemanyuri]

All of my sites have been bouncing around / dropping out of G the last few months. About a fortnight ago (give or take) I completely stopped link building. Now my sites have all settled finally, and in higher positions than before. I've had much improved SEO results by just leaving the sites to their own devices

 

[woffer]

I definitely think you can over optimise your site to becoming to perfect. Loads of links, different sources, unique content, h1, h2 tag, bolded keywords, density etc etc. But ultimately Panda has definitively changed things for good and now the focus is mostly on user metrics like the seomoz video said. Googles algorithm is getting smarter and therefore better at being able to browse a site almost like a human would and less like a computer programme.

 

[octopus]

I definitely think you can over optimise your site to becoming to perfect. Loads of links, different sources, unique content, h1, h2 tag, bolded keywords, density etc etc. But ultimately Panda has definitively changed things for good and now the focus is mostly on user metrics like the seomoz video said. Googles algorithm is getting smarter and therefore better at being able to browse a site almost like a human would and less like a computer programme.

Agree with this. Domain age and quality content would be my two recommendations.

 

[chippyb]

if you head over to pocket lints website the have some tips about this as they got hit badly by it as well

 

[stephenspint]

what

please explain further

 

[FagEnd]

All of my sites have been bouncing around / dropping out of G the last few months. About a fortnight ago (give or take) I completely stopped link building. Now my sites have all settled finally, and in higher positions than before. I've had much improved SEO results by just leaving the sites to their own devices

All of your sites have been bouncing around? Is that the technical term for search engine fluctuation? The only sites you have are in your signature!!!
I'm sure we can all feel relieved now that someone who relies on signature links has confirmed that panda is a scam. Is there a legitimate reason for that many links in your signature?

 

[theonemanyuri]

I don't think it is no. I have a few more than are in my sig, but what has that got to do with anything? I didn't mention panda or scam or anything related, I said what was happening to my sites. Is there a limit to the number of signature links?

 

[FagEnd]

I don't think it is no. I have a few more than are in my sig, but what has that got to do with anything? I didn't mention panda or scam or anything related, I said what was happening to my sites. Is there a limit to the number of signature links?

I've no idea what the rules are for signature links on Acorn, I'm sure if there is a limit you'll reach it soon