Panda Smacked - now it's your turn

[dexm10]

Hi all

Ok so we were smacked by Panda way back in June 2011, and are recovering from it, (though definitely still not back up to pre-Panda levels).

Since then we have:

1. Taken down a load of thin content pages.

2. Increased content.

3. Tried to reduce page template complexity.

However, one of the issues we have is that we make money from Adsense, so don't want to reduce the number of ads - however, we may still be falling foul of Panda because of it.

So, please take a look at this sample page and tear it /us apart:

http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/children/children-act-orders.html

Thank you.

And if we can ever help the community back, please just ask.

[JustDucky]

Dexm10 - The substantive text on the sample page consists of 47 words.    In the U.S. 10 on similar legal topics, I doubt 470 words would work on a legal site nonetheless a page discussing such a common subject.

I noticed 10+ sub-topics on the sidebar.  My guess is that you'll need to combine the child articles into the parent and offer much deeper content to be competitive.  It will probably require a substantial investment of time by people who know the subject areas.

[CMC-SD]

I'm confused. This page is the definition of thin content. It's short, it's valueless, and it's poorly written. Sorry to be harsh, but that's the way I see it.

I don't know if your current ad arrangement and ad sizes will cause Panda problems, but until you get some real content on your pages, I suspect the ads are the least of your concerns.

[dexm10]

Hi

Thanks for the feedback.

Not all our pages are thin content.

1. Would it be better to remove thin content pages altogether?

Or

2. Combine thin content pages to lengthen the content on a page?

Not sure if Google has a word count per page.

The problem we have is that we have to break down complex areas of law into chunks. Also a growing number of our users access our site via phones, so will not scroll down long content pages.

[MashBonigala]

Hi, Not only do you have to combine pages - list 3 related topics on one page, you may also have to change the design of the site so you could have a 3 column design with the ads on the right column. The huge horizontal below header is not suc a great idea. My 2 cents. Mash

[dexm10]

Hi Mash

Thanks, like this:

http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/children/parental-responsibility-order.html

[CMC-SD]

Mobile users won't scroll? I've never heard that. I browse the web on my phone all day long (er, I mean, on coffee breaks ...) and I happily scroll.

Word count isn't a firm limit. You need to spend some more time thinking about what kind of information your visitors actually want from that page. If they are looking for legal information on Children Act Orders, what do they want to know? What are their needs? Are 47 words really going to meet their needs? Probably not.

[dexm10]

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback.

We can definitely add more to thin pages or combine pages.

Google can be odd though. When I do a search for "children act orders" on Google UK get back 291,000,000 results and the thin page is listed in 5th position.

(But then the pages above all have more content, so I guess we are just lucky for that page.)

Thanks again.

[CMC-SD]

That's probably because [children act orders] has no search volume and therefore no one is competing for the term. Are you sure you've identified the right keywords?

[dexm10]

"Are you sure you've identified the right keywords?"

That kind of goes to the heart of all this. We have spent so long chasing Google listings that we are almost at the point of ignoring G.

We realise that the term probably has a low search volume, but it is important to those that search for it - because of the nature of the search & subject.

I think we should probably stick with that.

[CMC-SD]

What I mean when I ask "Are you sure you have the right keywords?" is "Do you know what words people type in when they are seeking the information you offer?" You may suspect that people type in one thing when they really type in something completely different.

[MarieHaynes]

You've still got duplicate content issues.  I looked at this page:

http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/children/parental-responsibility-order.html

and copied chunks of text to see if they existed elsewhere on Google.  Here is an example showing many other sites with the same text.  Just to be sure it was more than just one sentence duplicated I did the search with another chunk of text and got similar results.

Take a look at this page: http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/private-housing/warrants-of-execution.html

It has very little text.  When I take the first line and search for it in quotes on Google I get 4 pages that have the exact same text.

Now it's possible that these are copying you and you are the original owner.  However, when I looked at one of the copies I they say that they are quoting the "opsi government law website", whatever that is.  It sounds like these articles that you have on your site are basically quoting the law.  If this is the case then just quoting something that already exists is a surefire way to ask for Panda to affect you.

On a page like the one I just mentioned I would likely noindex, nofollow it because it is so thin.  But better yet would be to write a full article about what a warrant of execution is.  Perhaps give a fictitious example of where one would be used.  Maybe include a photograph of an actual warrant of execution.  Write in your own words a thorough description.  Basically I would want to rewrite the content so it is the absolute best page on what a warrant of execution is that exists on the internet.

When I advise people on how to rewrite content for a Panda hit site I ask them to think of Google's blog post describing Panda, primarily these parts:

"Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?"

"Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?"

"Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?"

"Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?"

...and also this part of the quality guidelines:

"Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field."

Your problem is definitely not Adsense.

[dexm10]

Hi Marie

Thank you very much for your reply. Been up most of the night looking at this.

For this page (and many others) it appears that our content has simply been scraped. Even down to link text - which works on our site, but does not work with copies, and so appears odd and out of context in the copied text.

http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/children/parental-responsibility-order.html

On Google UK I have found 3 pages of complete or very near copies.

Just to be clear - we actually sit down and write the law, but we do make it accessible and easier to understand. Because we are writing about the law we need to express it accurately. It actually takes a fair amount of legal experience to do this properly.

What we are up against is:

1. Those that copy our work completely.

2. Those that manipulate the odd word or words, so as to appear they are not copying our work.

Simply adding to our text looks like it could just add to our problems.

We have spent a long time serving notices on Google - who to be fair have been quick to remove content.

So this is a very big question - where to we go from here?

• keeping serving notices?

• keeping changing content?

• would the "rel author" tag help?

We have been going a long time, and we want to continue going, but not like this.

We could end up spending more time policing our content, than actually adding to it and keeping it updated. That would be ironic.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to sit down with Matt Cutts over a coffee and discuss this?

[MarieHaynes]

I wish I knew the answer to this.  My own site has pages that have been copied hundreds of times and yet I haven't been affected by Panda.

I want to ask you about something...I took this phrase from the page that you suggested:

"If you are a father, but you are not married to your partner and the children are not living with you then you may not have the right to make important decisions concerning the children."

And when I searched on Google there were 34 pages that had this exact text.  Did you write this exact text or did it come from a law book?  (Sorry I don't know legal terms, but I think you understand what I am saying.)

Now, on a different note, I searched for the keywords in the title of your page, "parental responsibility order" and you were #4.  I also searched for the title of other pages of yours and I see you quite often on the first page.  Are you sure that you have been affected by Panda?  Most Panda hit sites drop off into oblivion.  There was indeed a Panda update in June 2011, but it's possible that there is something else going on.

It may just be that your site lost a few positions to competitors.  A drop from #1 to say #3 for some of your terms could be devastating in regards to traffic.

ahrefs shows a steady decline in the number of backlinks you have.  Have you been trying to clean up your backlink profile because of all of the fear of penalties lately?  If you have and you've gotten rid of some good links this can cause your rankings to drop.

Hopefully I'm not confusing you more.  It is my mission in life right now to fully understand Panda and Penguin, so I like a good mystery like this.

[dexm10]

Hi Marie

Thanks again for your reply.

Yes, we wrote the text, rather than taking it from a book. Because we have been going for quite a long time, (before our current domain our domain was lawrights.co.uk, which we setup in 1996) a lot of people have copied our content.

It is only now that we are actually taking notice of it. A lot of it is innocent, people cut & paste content from a page onto a forum, but there is no link back to us.

We did have some keyword specific domains (about 4), which we removed about 12 months ago. Other than that, we have not done much.

[MarieHaynes]

So was your drop in June 2011 dramatic?  Or just a gradual decline?  Have you done any cutting of backlinks?

[dexm10]

We declined about 50%.

We really haven't done much in the way of cutting back-links.

But we have removed duplicated content on our own site and quite a lot of thin content in the past 12 months. Though for the thin content we obviously have more to do.

The site content is split up the way it is because the old school advice was to target one keyword term or phrase per page. But it now seems that people are moving much more to writing articles with several different (but complimentary) keyword phrases in each article. Basically a longer article divided into 3 or 4 parts.

I guess that's down to Penguin-panic.

There are many occasions where we have the discussion to stop chasing Google and seo and just concentrate on users.

But that does not help with scraping.

[dexm10]

The other judgment call we need to make is whether to ask for this content to be removed from the search index. It copies our content, but does link back to us.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=29850065&postcount=14

This site also gets huge traffic.

I guess if the posts stay on the site, but are removed from Google search index we benefit.