Tool based websites after Panda and Penguin

[cbielich]

I have several sites that I classify as "tool" based sites. These type of sites includes anagram solvers for word games, ip address lookups and other various based tools. I like to specialize in these kind of sites because frankly I am not a blogger and hate to write.

Before Panda I was doing fairly well, I had many users coming to my sites everyday. The Panda update "tips" that I read all over including on google sites seems to always refer to articles and how to deal with those. The only problem is that I am not an article based site. Yes I have content that describes my tools, but we are talking 1 to at most 2 paragraphs per page. I know Panda effected my ratings because I lost ranking with some big keywords. Since then I have been able to gain some ground, but I am having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly google wants from a site like me. The main path I am getting from Panda is concentrating on the users, and what will make their experience better. I focus on that whenever I make a change. I figure  the easier I make it for them, the happier they are going to be.

I am wondering what you guys think about some things I can look into creating or focusing on to enhance my site. I use social media heavily (FB, tweets, posterous, blog, RSS Feed) already, but is there something else I can look at that might help me that I am not seeing. I seem to be running out of ideas.

• Maybe add more content to my pages?
• Check link structure (its pretty basic as it is)
• add more article based blog posts?

Just want some ideas, I will send my URL to anyone who wants to take a look and see what I may be missing.

C

[JustDucky]

Cesar :

I looked at your Scrabble Dictionary site. (Nice).

I probably wouldn't blog but would spend time trying to involve the user with the site and try to build loyalty or continue to build authentic socials.   (On other info search sites, forums seem to do pretty well and moderating the UGC to exclude spam is far easier than sustaing a blog.)

The scrabble game is buried in a secondary page and takes a LONG time to load.  (The ads for "Buy A Link" which appear to delay the game loading up in Java do not help.)

I'd consider moving the game to the home page or at least makiing it more prominent as a choice on the home page.  Then, I'd consider awarding some sort of prize (a Scrabble game?) to whoever scores the highest on site that month.  If you can restrict the prize to those in your FB community, you'd limit the CPU drain and gain community in FB. (Sort of a take off on EGOL's "Free Beer").

Just my .02 drachma/euro....   We'll see what far more experienced people suggest.

[cbielich]

EGOL's "Free Beer" post is awesome. I think what I am suffering from is just the other sites are more authoritative than me. That's an awesome recommendation What kind of title you think I should go with?