How do I eliminate indexed products?

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Please help!  We got clobbered by Penguin and are at risk of having to close down after 10 years.  We have been trying to figure out why and believe now it might be because of duplicate content.  We added 2" inserts in March (over 500):

http://www.trophycentral.com/inserts1.html

Even though each is a different products, SEOMOZ is saying they are considered duplicate content.  Given the timing, we think this might be the cause, even though it is totally legitimate.

Question - since these are now indexed and since we can't easily add content quickly, what is the best way to handle this situation?  A no-index tag?

Is there a way to let Google know that their algorithm is detroying legitimate businesses??

[AlanMosley]

I had a quick look at this page http://www.trophycentral.com/50401.html

I found below, it is much longer thenthe sample i gave here, i would get rid of it, it looks like you are trying to spam the results

var = new Array('Have used them many times. Seamless transactions - all done through the web. Top quality product. Fast delivery. Custom engraving, including logos. Highly recommended. DR Angola, IN','This was my first order with Trophy Central, and my experience was great. I did everything on-line, the....

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Alan, thanks.  Not to sound stupid, but

1. What about the product looks like it is spam to you?

2. If I have a no index, no follow in inserts1, will that prevent goolge from all of the sub pages?

3. If the pages are already indexed, how can I get rid of them?

Sorry for the ignorant questions, but I own the business and I am not a webmaster.

Thnaks!

[AlanBleiweiss]

I checked a few things -you have bigger fish to fry.

Search.trophycentral.com and mobile.trophycentral.com - are either of those causing duplicate content problems on a mass scale?  Google has 8k www pages indexed, and three times as many non www pages indexed.

Then looking at your inbound link profile, you've got a huge volume of inbound links from very low quality "SEO only" sites relative to your total inbound link profile.  Very serious problem there.

Then you've got another site you apparently own site (StrictlyGifts.com) where you have a footer link with keywords, from every page of that site pointing to the TrophyCentral site.

The list goes on.

The cumulative impact is clearly a case of your site showing all the signs of SEO stuffing and unnatural link building.  Even if some of it was unintentional (like the duplicate content conflicts across sub-domains), the pattern is clear.

1. Do all you can to get as many of the bad links removed as possible.  Keep a spreadsheet of that effort.

2. Block search.trophycentral.com from search engines.

3. Either redirect mobile.trophycentral.com to the main www site and have the main www site redesigned to be flexible and responsive to different viewing platforms, or get together with a mobile SEO expert to otherwise address that duplicate content issue.

4. Add high quality unique descriptive text based content to all of your primary category and sub-category pages, and even some on every product page.

5. Consider submitting a reconsideration request to Google after you've made real headway on all of that work.  Be willing to submit the spreadsheet to show links you've had removed and which you tried to but couldn't.  Explain all the other steps you've taken.

You may get a bounce after that or it could just take the next Penguin update if you've done most of that before the next update.

Either way, that's just recommendations that come from only a few minutes looking at your site. There could be many other issues to address.

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Alan, thank you so much for this. I am the founder of the business and not a webmaster, so parden these questions:

1. I originally thought it was the mobile site that caused this given the timing, but was told that somehow google was on the lookout for mobile.xxx and that it was not an issue.**  I am sure you are right!  How can I get rid of the indexed pages? ** I turned the mobile redirect off a couple of weeks ago so it is not even active.

2. My search provider told me they made changes to get rid of most of the pages, but since I are still seeing them, I am concerned.  Is thiere something I can do to get rid of the pages?

3. I can easily change strictlygifts - this is the only thing that was intentional (but done about 8 years ago!).

4. How can I tell which are bad links - low page rank?

I have made thousands of changes based on the advice of others - improved the site speed, removed crawl errors, got rid of hundreds of pages, added duplicate content, etc.  We were not given any sort of manual penalty - can I still submit a request after the above is done?

Thank you again.  I have built this business over the last 10 years and to see it destroyed overnight is heartbreaking. I can't tell you how much your help is appreciated.

[AlanBleiweiss]

This is a sad reality that many business owners face.  SEO is a very complex process and unfortunately it's a case of two-fold barriers to success.

On the one hand, not all SEO's really know, or even if they do, don't consider long-term ramifications of what they might be recommending.  Many of us in the industry think and act otherwise, however it is a problem nonetheless.

On the other hand, Google constantly changes their rules to a certain extent - as more people look for ways to game the system, what may have been acceptable previously can become unacceptable as Google tries to clean up the mess.  It's a vicious circle.

So...

You can get "rid" of indexed pages by blocking them through a robots.txt file - if there are patterns to their URLs.  if it's an entire site, you can block the whole site in one line in the robots.txt file.  If it's multiple sections of a site, you can block entire sections while leaving other sections open for search indexing. A professional should be tapped to help you with that.

Its important to consider whether pages should be blocked, or instead, redirected to other pages that you want indexed or are indexed that are similar in nature.

Bad link evaluation is a professional process and should not be undertaken lightly.  In many cases, site owners will ignore your requests, so it's important to at least get the request process right and to document the process. Again, a professional is needed for that.

And yes, you can submit a request after that's done.

Unfortunately, anyone you task to do the work that would be able to help you will both charge you for their time and cannot guarantee that what is done will be enough.  It's another reality of the world we operate in because Google cannot reveal trade secrets to help you know what exactly needs to be done.

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Alan, thank you!  I just sent a note to the programmer who created the mobile site. For now, I am going to have them get it out of the index and I have stopped the redirection so that there is no mobile site.  This may not be the best thing for the long-run, but for now I can at least be sure I fix the mobile issue. I have also fixed the strictlygifts linking.  Working on removing more duplicate content now.

Thanks again!

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Sorry to bother you again - last question - I promise!  Where did you see the mobile.trophycentral.com pages indexed?  I when on to google and didn't see them in the main index.  Thanks!

[AlanBleiweiss]

site:trophycentral.com -www  shows all content indexed not within the www subdomain.

[AlanMosley]

If they are noindex, then it should not be  problem, but i would not no-follow as all links pointing the the no follow pages will waster their link juice, if you have no-index follow then the link jucie will flow back out of the no-indexed pages.

but having a look at the page, i can not see any no-index tag in the page

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

I can see them now - THANK YOU!!!

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Thanks, Alan.  I had put a no-index, no-follow on the main category (inserts1.html) so that google could not get to the individual products to index them.  That was the quickest thing I could do given how many products I need to update.  Based on your note though, I will go through the individual products with a no-index, but it will take some time.  Thanks again!

[AlanMosley]

Remeber 6that should be a no-index,follow not a no-index,no-follow

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Got it - thanks.  I will be making the changes over the next few days.  Unfortunately, I published the site last night and it will take about 18 hours so I can't access it for a while.