Penalty or Algorithm hit?

[askthetrainer]

After the Google Algorithm was updated my site took a week hit in traffic. The traffic came back a week later and was doing well a week AFTER the algorithm change and I decided that I should do a 301 redirect to make sure I didn't have duplicate content (www. vs. http://) I called my hosting company (I won't name names but it rhymes w/ Low Fatty) and they guided me through the supposedly simple process.. Well, they had me create a new (different) IP address and do a domain forward (sorry about bad terminology) to the www. This was in effect for approximately 2 weeks before I discovered it and came along with a subsequent massive hit in traffic. I then corrected the problem (I hope) by restoring the old IP address and setting up the HTACESS file to redirect all to www. It is a couple weeks later and my traffic is still in the dumps. On WMT instead of getting traffic from 10,000 keywords I'm getting it only from 2k. Is my site the victim of some penalty (I have heard of sandbox) or is my site simply just lower in traffic due to the new algorithm (I checked analytics data to find that traffic only in the US is cut by 50%, it is the same outside the US) Could someone please tell me what is going on?

[AdamThompson]

Michael, answering your question fully will require analyzing your site, and probably your traffic and GWT data. If you can post your site url, I'll take a brief look at it. If you can put together a traffic data graph showing your drops in traffic and how they coincided with what changes you were making to your site, that would be helpful, too.

[wissamdandan]

I think your talking about askthetrainer.com

after short analysis am sure that is not a penalty.

your site might be harmed from the Google Panda update

[askthetrainer]

Okay, if this is the case, what are webmasters recommended to do ?  Increase site speed?  Any links appreciated.

Thanks

[askthetrainer]

Can I post analytics data or do I have to edit it first....

CLIFFS:

Site Traffic Drops 50% on Feb 24th and continues to ...

Traffic rises back to 100% March 3rd - 8th

Traffic drops back down to 50% on March 9th - Day after host advised me poorly and changed IP...

Traffic has been 50% of what it had been in the last few to this day, it is killing me financially

[wissamdandan]

Michael,

if you got hit with on the 24th of february, this was the Panda algorithm update.

First, if you sure that your content is 100% unique and a high quality site? i would go to

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=800

This thread is dedicated to people that have a high quality site that has been negatively affected by this change. a Google employee will look closer .

On the other hand, the stuff you can do to help your site are (this is my opinion, still webmasters and SEOs trying to figure our how they can get out or what are the criteria that triggered the panda update on their site)

• Trustworthy UI (user interface). your website is old (it looks like an old 1). see if there is a possibility to make a new site built on a robust CMS.
• site speed