Panda Update Hurt, but why?

[dfwgolfer]

Hi, my name is Sam and I am new to this forum and SEOMOZ. I got hit hard in rankings after the Panda Update and was really suprised. I do not use any black hat SEO I am aware of, do not keyword stuff, and dont even have a tag cloud. Just wondering what in the world I did to get hit hard. Anyone else have this happen, and If so what would be good SEOMOZ tool(s) to use? I will admit SEO has always confused me. From my experience it's not always the best site (relevance) that gets ranked the highest. I feel like I'm missing something with SEO. I'm hoping this SEOMOZ site will help. I may end up hiring someone from Elance to do my SEO, lol.

Sam

[AhlerManagement]

Hi, I would suggest checking your site for duplicate content. Sites with duplicate content and "over optimization" were hit hard with the Google updates.

I highly recommend you create a Campaign on SEOmoz. Once it crawls your site, it will give you detailed information on all of the errors and warnings for your site, duplicate content, too long of title tags, missing meta descriptions, broken URLS, etc.

You can also use the "On-Page Optimization Tool" under "Research Tools." You can check each URL on your site with a keyword.

Between the campaign option and the On-Page Optimization Tool, you should be able to figure out where some problems are. Best of luck!

[AdamThompson]

Can you share your site URL with us?

[dfwgolfer]

Yes Adam, it www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com.

Sam

[AdamThompson]

Hi Sam,

What day did your rankings drop (this will help determine which update hit your site)?

Here are some possible issues that could be hurting you with Panda or Penguin:

• You appear to have a link exchange directory for doing link exchanges: http://www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com/links.html Suggest removing the links directory and don't do link exchanges (it's OK to do a few with a couple high quality, relevant sites).
• The course pages don't have much unique content,and the content they do have is also on other sites: http://www.golftexas.com/golf-courses/north-central/burleson/southern-oaks-golf-club.htm Suggest adding unique content to each course page.
• You may be using too many keyword anchor texts. A natural link profile typically has more brand and url anchor texts than keyword. See http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com and https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/anchor-text?folder=&q=dfwgolfcourseguide.com&oq=dfwgolfcourseguide.com and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/ and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/post-penguin-seo-link-building-the-naked-url-truth/46936/
• Your links appear to be mainly from blog comments, directories, and link pages, which tend to be low quality links.

[dfwgolfer]

Adam,

My rankings were pretty good until shortly after Penguin, then it came crumbling down, so I am going by the time frame. When I first saw this the first thought that came to my mind was the Link exchange pages. Your right It's time for that to go, Google clearly does not like this.

As far as more content on the courses pages, I will have to look into it. When I created those pages there were very few sites that listed the 180 or so golf courses that are in the Dallas Fort Worth area, only the most popular seemed to be listed on the main sites. I  wanted to make available a complete listing. Having said that, adding content my competitors do not have would be great. I will have to try to come up with something unique to add, just not sure what that is yet.

Sam

[AdamThompson]

Hi Sam,

If it was Penguin that hit you, I would focus on these items, as Penguin was primarily backlink related:

• You appear to have a link exchange directory for doing link exchanges: http://www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com/links.html Suggest removing the links directory and don't do link exchanges (it's OK to do a few with a couple high quality, relevant sites).
• You may be using too many keyword anchor texts. A natural link profile typically has more brand and url anchor texts than keyword. See http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com and https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/anchor-text?folder=&q=dfwgolfcourseguide.com&oq=dfwgolfcourseguide.com and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/ and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/post-penguin-seo-link-building-the-naked-url-truth/46936/
• Your links appear to be mainly from blog comments, directories, and link pages, which tend to be low quality links.

Hope that helps!

~Adam