Has anyone recovered from Panda?

[diogenes]

My two websites were unaffected by the original and 2.0 panda updates, but istring in June my traffic has been down around 30%. In analyzing it appears that my long tail searches have been greatly impacted. So it looks like I am a victim of the mighty panda.My main site, www.uncontesteddivorce-nyc.com  is in my opinion a decent looking site, with unique content and no ads, etc., but for whatever reason it has been negatively affected. There might be some duplication of content between certain pages and also my links are all or practically all directory links, though a lot are pretty heavy duty directories.

I see a lot of stuff written giving advice on how to recover from Panda. Has anyone actually done so? How did you do it?

thx

Paul

[deltasystems]

Put yourself in Google's shoes: doesn't your website structure and content look familiarly like a content farm? I'm not saying your website is one, but it gives the vibe for several different reasons.

First, the domain is clearly overly-targeted towards keywords. That's a big giveaway that the website is probably not a legitimate business. If you are an attorney, you should instead have a domain registered for your company name. Have branding.

You are using a free WordPress theme. Content farms largely run WordPress because it's so easy to install across many different domains and manage them all with little effort. Content farms grab free themes because, well, they are free. Shouldn't a legitimate business have it's own web design?

You don't have a business listing in Google. When I search for your address I don't see your domain come up. Create one and verify your business number.

Give your website a more personal touch. Your admin name is uncontesteddivorceny. Create an author bio if you plan on having multiple authors, but at the very least use your real name.

To sum up the onpage stuff: it looks like you tried too hard to game the system. If I saw this listing in Google when searching for an actual attorney, I would quickly press back and block your website from appearing in my results again. I mean this criticism constructively.

And then of course there is the external SEO. I only took a brief glance, but it looks like all of your links are from directories, video channels, and comment spam. None of this looks good. Get endorsements from any organizations and websites you can that are actually authoritative. I don't know your industry well enough to give specific advice on this, however.

To answer your question, yes people recover from Panda. But if you are doing SEO right you never had to recover in the first place. SEOmoz has great articles to help you out if you aren't sure where to start.

Cheers.

[diogenes]

I very much appreciate the honest critique.  The only thing that I think a lot of people would have a problem with is your statement that using wordpress is spammy. The rest of your remarks make a lot of sense. But what I am looking for is not just anecdotal "makes sense" speculation type stuff but does anyone have any "hard" experienced of how they redic their site to recover from Panda? It seems that all there is out there is a lot of guesswork based upon Google's public statements, which most of us take with a  grain of salt. But once again, very good and helpful response.

Paul

[deltasystems]

The only thing that I think a lot of people would have a problem with is your statement that using wordpress is spammy

I believe WordPress had a recent blog post that said around 10% of websites on the Internet are using their platform. That's not the problem of course! Using the free themes (I see a link in your footer) degrades a website. The sitewide link is taking value from each page, and then of course being a free theme it begs the question if the business is legitimate.

I'll be honest: I only paid mind to the first Panda update. I haven't been affected by the first or subsequent updates so I stopped following it, so I can't give you specific advice on how others have seen it through.

Here is a discussion to get you started, though:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4305793.htm

Here is a poll that shows interesting results about recovery:

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-recovery-poll-13456.html

Juicy content from SEOmoz:

http://www.google.com/search?&q=panda+insite:seomoz.org

[diogenes]

I looked at the links Interestingly someone said that Wordpress sites have been hit particularlyhard. I know that wordpress sites do tend to have problems with duplicate content due to the categories and tags, etc., so that might have something to do with it. Also someone else said that even if your site is not hurt if the sites linking to you are, that this would hurt your traffic. This might be my situation as my decline in traffic is more moderate than what others have reported whose own sites were bitten by Panda.

Does anyone else have any ideas?