I’m sure many of you read my the post I made a while back as I was delighted I’d sorted out my Google Duplicate Content issues. My traffic rose nicely, and has remained at a reasonable level. However, after a few weeks of waiting for all of my pages to return to the index, I’ve been forced to an unfortunate conclusion - there was more than one problem!!
Doctor, Doctor… I Think My Site Has A Terrible Illness, It’s a Shadow of its Former Self!
*sigh* Many of my site pages are still being filtered out. Basically, for some of the site pages Google is ignoring my nicely crafted brand specific pages, and choosing to rank another less relevant page from the site in it’s place. A sure fire sign that Google is not happy with you. Here’s a really good example for the search term “Odille Swim“.
I’ve spent the last 3 days solid doing test searches, looking closely at on page content, and analysing the difference between those pages that had recovered and those that had not. I’ve drawn some conclusions based upon a few consistent result behaviours and a generous helping of Google intuition. I thought it would be useful to share my thoughts on the issue with you guys so you can…
1 ) see my process (right or wrong) of working through a situation like this
and
2 ) so I can update you on how my efforts pan out!
So here’s Dr Kirsty’s diagnosis of her latest bout of algorythm-itis. A particularly nasty strain in my opinion!
The Symptoms
- Many pages are being filtered and have less relevant counterparts ranked in their place.
- Some unfiltered pages are sitting around result 50 when they should really be in the top ten.
- Some pages rank fine for their target search terms. These are generally the ones appearing in the results in place of the filtered pages. This results in traffic getting to the wrong sections of the site, and reduced CTR.
- My blog posts are no longer indexed instantly.
- Just to make it interesting, some pages I’ve been monitoring have been penalised one day and fine the next.
- The homepage cache date frequently “rewinds”.
- I’ve written oodles of product-specific content around each brand on this site. They are included on the page via a wordpress plugin. The pages that are unaffected tend to have fewer brand relevant articles on them. They are more likely to have a few “irrelevant” articles about other brands.
- Ouch.
My Initial Diagnosis (if these Google malaises actually exist!)
- Several pages around result 50 to 60 does sort of point at a -50 penalty on some pages.
- When I looked at my pages with fresh eyes and looked for a reason for a penalty / filter I realised the pages looked quite over optimised. Although people argue its existence, I’ve theorised this may be the over optimisation filter.
- Alternatively, based on the fact that many of the worst affected pages had a lot of brand specific link text I wondered if Google might take umbrage at 1 ) there being too much link text on a page or 2 ) too high a proportion of link text being tightly aligned to a set of related search terms.
- The plugin that places related posts on my pages repeats one article on each page twice, and the same excerpt is likely to appear on other site pages. This could trigger an additional duplicate content issue that has not manifested on the pages that have bounced back into the index.
Dr Kirsty’s Treatment
This is the list I will be working through step by step. In an attempt to identify what the issue really is, I’ll be altering a reasonable proportion of my site pages stage by stage to see what effect each alteration has. Therefore, the following steps are in order of “gut suspicion”!
- The excessive link text is first up for alteration as it is the most consistent signal I’ve seen on affected pages. I’ll be reducing this on every page, but making sure the relevant articles remain associated with those pages.
- The duplicate article excerpts will have to go. I’ll take steps to ensure that any article is only mentioned once on any given page and does not turn up in more than one place within the site.
- Finally, I’ll go through each and every site page and reduce the “keyword density”, making sure the mentions of product brand names look natural and fall within a reasonable percentage range.
- After that, who knows? Is it me? Is there an issue with Google? Have my 301 redirects to sort the previous problem caused some other mysterious issue? There will only be questions!
Phew! So there you have three days of my life. A lot of it has been conflicting and contradictory, but I hope I have pinpointed where the issues are at. I have to say this site was developed with a focus on Adwords traffic. My main concern was adding significant value. Which I am pleased to say has worked extremely. My pages have excellent QS. However, I now want to get the SEO sorted on these pages as they really had been bringing in a good amount of traffic (10K visitors per month and rising when they were slapped). Like any affiliate who gets what they want… I now want more!
I won’t be beaten Google, but why is it so difficult to keep both sides of the algo happy when you’re an affiliate?
Strangely though, I have sort of enjoyed the last few days. My once excellent SEO skills are terribly rusty, but SEO was my first passion before affiliate marketing. It has felt sort of good to re-immerse myself in it. At the same time, it has made me feel horribly inadequate - I have fallen behind with the Google times.
Any insight or observations would be welcomed from anyone who has had similar issues, or greater SEO knowledge than I.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:08 am
As you know Kirsty I’m suffering from the same terrible disease as you in the same niche in fact.
Yesterday I removed the related post plugin from the site and saw my click throughs triple (sadly sales didn’t decide to jump up by the same..).
So there I was thinking I’d solved everything.
Except then it happened on another site that I didn’t do anything to. Back to the drawing board then…
I do think that the duplicate anchor text and over optimisation is the source of the problem and will be testing a few things out this weekend. I’ll report back on how it works out!!
August 1st, 2008 at 11:44 am
Hey Michelle,
Yeah I am feeling your pain and will appreciate any thoughts you may have! I did notice that your Odille page (could it be the damned brand?!) wasn’t indexed any longer or did not appear to be. I don’t know if this is part of a wider filter for you or symptomatic of something else.
If you’re at the Expo I’ll see you there for a good cry (and a drink) about how bad Google is to us affiliate girls!!
August 1st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I have the same issues on one of my sites.
I too had dabbled with related posts and also page links in the footer, I have removed these. If the problem is on site then it will clear shortly.
Have you read anything on -60 which is supposedly caused by a bad (aggressive low quality) inbound link profile? Would be interested to know what you think of this?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Hi Jez, I’m still getting to grips with all these various penalties and filters. In my case, I doubt I’ve done anything wrong enough in terms of inbound links to have caused this.
I got paranoid about it on day 2 of the research process and spent a couple of hours checking the rankings of everyone I exchanged links with. They are all fine! Most of my inbound links come from quality sites (albeit of an affiliate nature) with good inbound links of their own and unique content.
I did read somewhere that someone who had exchanged too many links saw an improvement after removing their links page. But I dunno. That one doesn’t “feel right” for what has happened here. The filter differs from page to page, and there’s consistencies in the condition of pages ranking or not ranking. Is this the case for your site? Have you done an in-depth analysis?
I’d be really interested to hear more on your experiences with this one!
August 1st, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Im still stuck on it myself Im afraid, but will let you know if it clears…
I removed related posts a while back, saw some improvement… put it back on and the site really dived, but I cannot say if its related.
Google webmaster tools do not show any issues on dupe content. There are a small number of dupe titles and meta tags, but nothing significant. I do not know how good G’s tools are at flagging up these issues though.
Have you check these tools yourself??
Jez
August 1st, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Hey Jez, interesting you saw a slight improvement as my gut is that the similar posts plugin has a lot to do with this issue!
I have indeed checked Google Webmaster tools, but as you rightly surmise they aren’t terribly good at flagging up anything other than the obvious (dare I say useless!!). My other issue (with duplicate pages) didn’t flag anything up within the interface.
Please do keep me informed, every little bit of information in a situation like this does help build a picture of what is going on.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I’ve looked at my Google webmaster tools and couldn’t see any real issues either.
I rebuilt my sitemap because Google didn’t like a link or two but these don’t seem to be related to the problem we’re all having but I’ll keep you informed if it makes a difference!
August 1st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Hi Kirsty,
I suggest you get rid of your link exchange page
Google doesn’t like pages like that as all:
“…some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”
You can argue that you only include relevant links but if links didn’t help you rankings would you really have a page like that? I think not!
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 am
Hey Sean, as I’ve said above I will be looking at the possibility of this being an off site penalty once all on site factors are removed.
It is very important in a situation like this not to have a knee jerk reaction about everything you read on the internet (even the things Google say).
I feel if this were related to on-site factors that the filter would be more evenly applied. I link widely to other sites from mine, not all on a reciprocal basis so I haven’t been building links in an aggressive way, nor are my links a shoddy load of old spam. This blog would be negatively impacted if a link filter were implemented against cross linking similar to that on the lingerie site I think, as I cross link with everyone on my blogroll!
However, if I exhaust on-site factors I shall definately take that page down as a test for a few days to see if anything happens. You can discount nothing with Google!!
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
Hi Kirsty,
It’s not the fact that you are reciprocal linking, it is the terms you use and how obvious you are. You have a link in your footer with the achor text “Exchange links”, that is way too obvious. Plus the page’s url is /exchange-links/ - and the H1 tag is “Exchange links”. It all looks nasty, as google says “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank”.
I would also change your title tags. You have the same excess words repeated in virtually all title tags, which makes them too long, and appear to be keywords stuffed.
E.g.
“Exchange Fashion Lingerie Shopping Links Add URL Submit Link : Lingerie Brands : UK Lingerie Brands : Designer Underwear”
“Dorothy Perkins Lingerie Voucher Code : Free Delivery July 2008 : Dorothy Perkins : Lingerie Brands : UK Lingerie Brands : Designer Underwear” - this is a 149 characters long, the recommended is 65 to 70 as this is all google displays.
I would remove “Lingerie Brands : UK Lingerie Brands : Designer Underwear” as these are repeated and just dilute the other keywords and make your title tags too long. It also could be argued that you are keyword stuffing your title tags.
The other main problem is that the site feels like a thin affiliate site. I know there is lots of content but if you arrive at the homepage, then navigate via the main nav bar at the top you dont see any content at all. Zero content before you are set via an affiliate link to another site. E.g. home > menswear > sports & swimware > affiliate link out.
I hope this helps.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 am
Hi Sean, thanks for your thoughts. I actually think I’ve now identified the main issue affecting the site. I will look at my links page once all of this is sorted out though, you’re right that these type of pages are becoming a bit of a liability. It makes more sense to weave any link exchanges into Google content what with the shift towards Google being terribly put out by blatant exchanging of links.
Today I finally managed to find a consistent pattern within the filter application which was related to a way I’ve been using content. I feel there are a couple of things wrong with the structure.
You do raise a decent point though about the content of the links in that top portion from a users point of view (as opposed to a search engine robot). I should think about creating something a bit better there really as people do look at the top bar to access key site areas.
Interesting thoughts Sean, thanks. Oh, and sorry about your links. I’ve got the posting of URL’s to my comment fields disabled
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
What was the consistent filter application pattern you found? I am following this thread with great interest. Thank you for sharing with us.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Hi Greg, It is one or two factors surrounding content being featured on multiple pages. I am going to do another post updating on what action I’ve taken and the improvements (if any!!) arising from that.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Duplicate content probably is one of the main causes, you said earlier in your post you thought it could be keyword density have you checked to see whether your keyword density is at an ok level? there is a really useful online resource do you use one?
August 5th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Will look out for your next post… a couple of other changes I had made in the weeks leading up to my site before the penalty:
1) Removal of “disallow” in robots.txt for the jump pages. Before G could not follow my aff links… I stupidly took this off.
This may be relevant for the reasons Sean stated. My site also has content… but it has a LOT of aff links too.
2) I had a recip link page, but only 4 links or so, for a couple of days, I just deleted it.
3) I had a couple of posts on my compeitor’s with lots of free links out to my competitors on those pages those pages…. the intention was to make it look like a resource, but I think it may have been taken as a recip spam thing… I have now no followed those links…. and may delete next week if I see no change.
That said, those posts have been up for some time, although… I use DD-Post Shift to rotate older posts, and both these posts were at the top of the blog page at the time…
*********
I think the thin aff site thing may have a lot to do with it… I have just disallowed the jump pages again, but am unsure whether that will make any difference.
I have the same issues you do with seemingly irrelevant pages outranking specifically targeted ones on certain queries.
My organic G traffic has pretty well gone, just as I was starting to make some sales from it
Sooo… wishing us both luck
August 5th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Hi all
If any anyone has a reference url for the rules re frequency of links and the various ‘link text’ issues Kirsty mentions, I’d be grateful if it could be posted thanks.
- M
August 5th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Hi and thanks for this really cool post. Lately there have been a few person posts which , don’t get me wrong, are fine. But the honest truth is it is for the marketing banter that I visit this site
Anyway to my comment, Can’t help but notice the comments on link exchange pages. Is this refring to reciprocal links amd if so, do people still use Reciprocal links? The little SEO I know indicates that they may not be as valuable as they once were.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Thanks Ami. Well, the thing about this blog is that it pretty much is my stream of consciousness. I don’t have any paying sponsors, so what you get is whats on my mind. When you’re 5 weeks off your wedding, and moving house in 3 weeks… that’s what the posts end up being about!
Normal service will be resumed shorty, do not fear. I’ve a lovely post about the different Google filters and how they manifest half finished.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:44 am
[...] promised I would keep a bit of a log on this blog about the process I’m going through to try and sort out some Google filter issues my lingerie website has been suffering from. I’ve now spent almost a week working my way [...]