Last Panda: removed a lot of duplicated content but no still luck!

[fablau]

Thank you Marie, yes, the canonical should tell Google what you said, but I don't understand why the other pages (subsequent index pages) are still in the index despite the canonical tag. Am I missing something?

About the thin content and how that affect the whole site, I have no more doubts, that's clear and I will tackle that page by page. I am just wondering if my presence on Google is going to improve little by little over time while I tackle the problem page-by-page, or will my site score get better only when everything will be clean and improved? To deindex everything and start rewriting with the best products first. as EGOL suggested really scares me since we live with the site and we could ending up making no money at all for too long.

[EGOL]

The academic year is coming to a close in the northern hemisphere.  Hire a music scholar who is also a great writer and attack this.  Or hire a writer who appreciates music.  Better yet, hire one of each.

It is time to exert yourself.

[MarieHaynes]

I'm not sure that I'm following what you are saying.  Which pages are in the index that you feel should not be because of their canonical tag?

You mentioned above that it sounds like it is "easy" to recover from Panda.  I don't think that is true for most sites.  Most likely in EGOL's case he had a site that had some fantastic content to go along with the duplicate and thin content.  If there is good stuff there, then getting rid of the low quality stuff can sometimes be a quick fix.  But, if you've got a site that consists almost completely of thin or duplicated content then it may not be so easy.

In my experience, when a site recovers from Panda, it does not happen gradually as the site gets cleaned up and improved.  Rather, there is a sudden uptick when Panda refreshes provided that you have done enough work for Google to say that enough of your site is high quality.  However, this may change now that Panda will be rolling out as part of the regular algorithm and not just every 4-6 weeks or so as before.

[EGOL]

Most of the content on my site is articles that are 500 to 5000 words and one to ten photos - all on a single page.

It was very easy for me to "noindex" the republished content and "noindex" the blog posts that were very short.

For a site that consists of pages where most of the content is thin and duplicated a massive rewriting job is required in my opinion.  That is what I would do if I wanted to make an attempt at recovering such a site.

I had to chop off my foot to save my ass.

[fablau]

Marie, look at the following page, it is the main (first) page of our guitar index:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Guitar.html

Now, if you want to browse the guitar repertoire to the second page of the index, you click the page "2" or "next" link right? And then the second page appears:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Guitar.html?cp=2&lpg=20

And so on... well, those subsequent pages are the ones I was talking about: they have the rel=prev and rel-next tags together with the canonical tag that refers to the main (first) index page, but many of those subsequent pages are still in the index, Shouldn't they disappear and only the first page kept in the index?

As for what you wrote about how I can expect a recover from Panda, it makes sense and I really hope this new integration of Panda into the main algorithm will gradually speed things up. Thank you for your opinion on that.

I think my approach will be to keep noindexing those pages that really don't bring any business first and in the meantime improve all the others one by one. To nonidex all pages and start releasing just the optimized ones one by one scares me too much!

[fablau]

Yes EGOL, I understand that my only way is to really thicken and differentiate the pages with real and unique content. I will try that and keep you posted! Thank you for your help again.

[fablau]

Sorry Marie, I forgot to answer your inquiry about music2print.com: that's one of our affiliates! That's another issue we could suffer for... how do you suggest to tackle the affiliate-possible-duplicate content? Thanks!

[MarieHaynes]

I just had a quick look but I don't see any other versions of the page you listed in the index.  If you just added the rel prev and next it won't take effect until the pages are crawled which could take even up to a few weeks to happen.

[MarieHaynes]

If there's duplicate content then you've either got to change yours, get theirs changed, or get them to use a rel-canonical tag pointing to your site or a noindex tag.

[fablau]

Actually you can see the subsequent pages still in the index, just enter on Google:

site:virtualsheetmusic.com inurl:downloads/Indici/Guitar.html

and you will see what I mean. I see though that most of those pages have been cached before I put the canonical tag, so I guess it is just a matter of time.
 Am I correct? I mean, if a page has a canonical tag that points to a different page it should NOT be in the index, right?

Thank you for looking!

[fablau]

Yes, I think will be easier to change our own contents and tell them to add the canonical tag to our page. Thanks!

[fablau]

Marie, I was thinking, do you think the new Google's Disavow Links Tool could help me with my affiliate's inbound links? I mean, in case I could be damaged by that kind of link profile...

[MarieHaynes]

The short answer to this is that this is not what the disavow tool was meant for, so no I wouldn't use it.  Affiliate links SHOULD be nofollowed though.  However, affiliate links won't cause you to be affected by Panda.  Link related issues are totally unrelated to Panda.

Unfortunately at this point though I'm going to bow out of taking this discussion any further due to time constraints. Q&A is a good place to get someone to take a quick look at your site, but if you've got lots of questions it may be worthwhile to pay a consultant to help out with your site's traffic drop issues.

[fablau]

Thank you very much Marie for your time and explanation, I appreciated it. Do you offer SEO consultation? Please, let me know.

Thank you again!

[fablau]

Never mind, I have just found your site... thank you again!