Websites with very little homepage text ranking?

mally · Mar 4, 2013

Hi all, been doing some research and noticed the following websites rank with virtually no text on the home page, any idea how?

magazinesubscriptions.co.uk and isubscribe.co.uk

cheers Mally

Murray · Mar 4, 2013

mally said:
Hi all, been doing some research and noticed the following websites rank with virtually no text on the home page, any idea how?

magazinesubscriptions.co.uk and isubscribe.co.uk

cheers Mally

They rank because of links.

Isn't magazine subs owned by a member on here? rings a bell.

Systreg · Mar 4, 2013

Murray said:
Isn't magazine subs owned by a member on here? rings a bell.

Yes, it's Mally's ^^^

mally · Mar 4, 2013

I own magazinesubscription.co.uk , fell a bit fowl recently with google, the joys!

Its strange, I run it under the company magazine subscription ltd, but can't even get ranked for that

Murray · Mar 4, 2013

mally said:
I own magazinesubscription.co.uk , fell a bit fowl recently with google, the joys!(

Have you been able to/had someone diagnose why you dropped?.

mally · Mar 4, 2013

Murray said:
Have you been able to/had someone diagnose why you dropped?.

No, I've tried myself but can't be sure. any advice?

Murray · Mar 5, 2013

mally said:
No, I've tried myself but can't be sure. any advice?

Would need some details about the date the site dropped + what keywords you dropped for.

+ Also if you have made any changes to the site or if you know anything else that might be relevant.

That is if you haven't had a message in your webmaster tools about unnatural links etc?

PM me if you want with the details you have and I will try and look into it a bit for for you.

retired_member32 · Mar 7, 2013

yes this is Googles attempt to drive people to pay for advertising, thinly created sites with one page of tosh and huge incoming links...you see people that build these sites have no budget so are no good to Google as a revenue stream, the person that spends a fortune on a nice site will need a return on there investment so will more than likely turn to Google Adwords...sad but very true

ratboy · Mar 7, 2013

I'm switching to a PPC model with mine, Google organic is deliberately being made to be unreliable.

Jump into bed with Google or suffer sleepless nights. I can only come to that conclusion for the future.

retired_member32 · Mar 7, 2013

exactly...you either bounce around the rankings or play the game, funny how Google decided to move there HQ to London then shaft us isn't it

less likely the Government will intervine if they get a cut...ahh what a crooked society we live in !!

ratboy · Mar 7, 2013

You can either fight it, or work out how to make some money with it. I spent a while getting downhearted with it, but then you realise it's done for a reason - free traffic is dead IMHO

Murray · Mar 7, 2013

ratboy said:
You can either fight it, or work out how to make some money with it. I spent a while getting downhearted with it, but then you realise it's done for a reason - free traffic is dead IMHO

Nah.

It's just easy free traffic with spam link and poor content is dead

^ At least for any serious length of time.

Unique content and quality links still do the job.. specially the links.

cc976a · Mar 7, 2013

Murray said:
Nah.

It's just easy free traffic with spam link and poor content is dead

^ At least for any serious length of time.

Unique content and quality links still do the job.. specially the links.

Does that apply to a drop in rankings due to Panda?

I dropped to page 72 (very last page in SERPs) for everything but the keyword in URL and despite several alterations, removing any thin pages (although overall the content was what I would deem to be quality) and hiring a SEO consultant - still no joy!

We've been focusing on content due to be identified as a drop re Panda but are links as important for a google algo Panda hit? (Google have confirmed not a manual penalty their side)

I've not given up on the site but changed so much over 6 months - how on earth do you reverse a Panda Slap? - anyone else succeeded?

Murray · Mar 7, 2013

cc976a said:
Does that apply to a drop in rankings due to Panda?

I dropped to page 72 (very last page in SERPs) for everything but the keyword in URL and despite several alterations, removing any thin pages (although overall the content was what I would deem to be quality) and hiring a SEO consultant - still no joy!

We've been focusing on content due to be identified as a drop re Panda but are links as important for a google algo Panda hit? (Google have confirmed not a manual penalty their side)

I've not given up on the site but changed so much over 6 months - how on earth do you reverse a Panda Slap? - anyone else succeeded?

Was this the site I looked at previously?

If you want to PM me about it I will have a look again for you.

boxfish · Mar 7, 2013

cc976a said:
I've not given up on the site but changed so much over 6 months - how on earth do you reverse a Panda Slap? - anyone else succeeded?

Most indepth report I've seen:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/six-months-with-panda-story-of-complacency-and-recovery/44774/

Murray · Mar 7, 2013

cc976a said:
I've not given up on the site but changed so much over 6 months - how on earth do you reverse a Panda Slap? - anyone else succeeded?

I keep seeing sites hit because of duplicate content, not stealing content from other sites, but having multiple URL variations of the same content on their own sites via different pathways.

Say you're google bot looking at a 2000 page site and because of URL variations 1500 is duplicate content.. add to that maybe a lot of those pages are thin content with affiliate links/advertising..

You can understand why they wouldn't want to rank sites which is 3/4 thin duplicate.

That is the kind of thing you need to avoid/fix.