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Thank you Kristen for your kind reply.

Yes, of course, I have considered that a thousand times. Do you really think that could cause so much trouble to make most of our rankings slip over the 10th or 20th page of the SERPS? Those pages you have mentioned on our website, are actually blocked by robots.txt, with the exception of the first page of course. My concern is about those first pages that should be able to rank anyway... unless you tell me that the contextual weight of the "subsequent" pages could play a role to "boost" the first page in some way if Google can spider and index them... but then, I'd be concerned with "too much similar or thin content" because by doing what our competitors are doing, I'd create thousands of additional pages with inside pretty much the same content (lists) organized in different ways... you see what I mean? Of course it seems to work for our competitor, but hence the contradiction and absurdity I was talking about above with the Panda algorithm: shouldn't all those thousands of extra and similar pages be bamboo for Panda?

I hope to have not confused you... I am just trying to find the elephant here that is causing the problem...

Thank you for your help!

That's just the result of my frustration for not having more than a single answer after so many days of opening this thread. I have not offended or dissed anybody specific with that. My intent was just a wake-up call to anyone could bump into this thread.

So, EGOL, please, let's stop here, ok? I am really interested to know if someone else can give me constructive feedback and advice.

Thank you fr your cooperation.

I am sorry, but I really think you are confusing me with someone else, I don't think to have been rude to anyone, ever. It's not in my nature. Yours is a strong accusation, so, please, show me where I have been rude on these forums. I am curious.

I'd really like to get back to the topic and stop this non-sense as soon as possible.

Ok, good. Please, tell me where you found issues that I could have fixed with the advice I received on these forums in the past. I can't really find any and that's why I posted this question in the first place.

I don't think though that a comment like yours should be allowed on these forums, mostly from the MOZ staff. In my opinion, that was rude and pretty offensive.

I am so sorry to read this, but you have no idea how seriously I have taken any advice I got from people here and anywhere else. I have spent the past 6 years working dozens of hours every day to apply what suggested and to figure this out Panda related problems, and not sleeping at night because of this. How dare you saying that??!! On what basis? Have you looked at my website to understand the work I have put into it to avoid any Panda related issues? I guess not otherwise you wouldn't have posted such a non-sense post. I have applied all and everyone of the tips and advised fixings I got from the "experts", but none of them worked apparently (if I am really still under a Panda penalty, which I strongly doubt at this point).

You may also want to checkout this other thread where I am specifically discussing Panda:

https://moz.com/community/q/panda-rankings-and-other-non-sense-issues

Please, look at the code on my website pages and tell me WHERE you find evidence that I deserve to be nuked by Panda and such because of my "laziness", then I'll keep discussing with you.

PS: Where have I ever "dissed" advice given by people on this forum? Please, tell me, I am curious. I don't think to have ever disrespected people's advice the way you have just disrespected my question herein. I am very disappointed by MOZ if you are really the "Content Director" on these forums.

Well, I am very disappointed that with all the "experts" we have on these forums, nobody is bothering to answer my question above or even just to give a hint. I guess it is too hard to give an answer. If so, I can consider myself an expert too then!

Has SEO lost any hope of rationalizing problems?

Thank you Donna for your reply, but that's exactly why I posted my concerns here: How do I know if a page or a set of pages are "causing" me to not rank? That's the purpose of this discussion... how do I actually know that any action of that kind, by "nuking" pages, will be causing me more benefit than damage?

A couple of years ago, I thought to be under a Panda penalty, and I started to remove from the index many of our product pages that I thought were not bringing us traffic or had low user engagement... well,  the only result we had was a steady decline of traffic because of the removed pages, that's all. I put all pages back after 6 months because we would have died miserably. After 6 months I concluded that we were NOT under a Panda penalty. IN fact, I put back all pages, traffic got back and we started to rank better than before (fortunate event??)

Also, if I we are under a Panda or similar penalty, why do we still rank well for some keywords? And, back again to square one: Why should we think to be under a Panda penalization if our content is actually less thin, less duplicate, and better handled with canonicals, noindex tages, etc, in order to cope with any possible Panda penalty than our well-ranked competitors??!

Thank you Julie, appreciated!! I really don't understand why most of the times our website content is buried in the search results, whereas "crappy" websites are shown prominently before us... do you call that "quality" big G??!!

Thank you again for your kind words

Thank you Chris for your in-depth answer, you just confirmed what I suspected.

To clarify though, what I am trying to save here by noindexing those subsequent pages is "indexing budget" not "crawl budget". You know the famous "indexing cap"? And also, tackling possible "duplicate" or "thin" content issues with such "similar but different" pages... fact is, our website has been hit by Panda several times, we recovered several times as well, but we have been hit again with the latest quality update of last June, and we are trying to find a way to get out of it once for all. Hence my attempt to reduce the number of similar indexed pages as much as we can.

I have just opened a discussion on this "Panda-non-sense" issue, and I'd like to know your opinion about it:

https://moz.com/community/q/panda-rankings-and-other-non-sense-issues

Thank you again.

Hello everyone

I have a problem here. My website has been hit by Panda several times in the past, the first time back in 2011 (first Panda ever) and then another couple of times since then, and, lastly, the last June 2016 (either Panda or Phantom, not clear yet). In other words, it looks like my website is very prone to "quality" updates by big G:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/

Still trying to understand how to get rid of Panda related issues once for all after so many years of tweaking and cleaning my website of possible duplicate or thin content (301 redirects, noindexed pages, canonicals, etc), and I have tried everything, believe me. You name it. We recovered several times though, but once in a while, we are still hit by that damn animal. It really looks like we are in the so called "grey" area of Panda, where we are "randomly" hit by it once in a while.

Interestingly enough, some of our competitors live joyful lives, at the top of the rankings, without caring at all about Panda and such, and I can't really make a sense of it.

Take for example this competitors of ours:

http://8notes.com

They have a much smaller catalog than ours, worse quality of offered music, thousands of duplicate pages, ads everywhere, and yet... they are able to rank 1st on the 1st page of Google for most of our keywords. And for most, I mean, 99.99% of them.

Take for example "violin sheet music", "piano sheet music", "classical sheet music", "free sheet music", etc... they are always first.

As I said, they have a much smaller website than ours, with a much smaller offering than ours, their content quality is questionable (not cured by professional musicians, and highly sloppy done content as well as design), and yet they have over 480,000 pages indexed on Google, mostly duplicate pages. They don't care about canonicals to avoid duplicate content, 301s, noindex, robot tags, etc, nor to add text or user reviews to avoid "thin content" penalties... they really don't care about anything of that, and yet, they rank 1st.

So... to all the experts out there, my question is: Why's that? What's the sense or the logic beyond that? And please, don't tell me they have a stronger domain authority, linking root domains, etc. because according to the duplicate and thin issues I see on that site, nothing can justify their positions in my opinion and, mostly, I can't find a reason why we instead are so much penalized by Panda and such kind of "quality" updates when they are released, whereas websites like that one (8notes.com) rank 1st making fun of all the mighty Panda all year around.

Thoughts???!!!

You are right, hard to give advice without the specific context.

Well, here is the problem that I am facing: we have an e-commerce website and each category has several hundreds if not thousands of pages... now, I want just the first page of each category page to appear in the index in order to not waste the index cap and avoid possible duplicate issues, therefore I want to noindex all subsequent pages, and index just the first page (which is also the most rich).

Here is an example from our website, our piano sheet music category page:

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

I want that first page to be in the index, but not the subsequent ones:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Piano.html?cp=2

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Piano.html?cp=3

etc...

After playing with canonicals and rel,next, I have realized that Google still keeps those unuseful pages in the index, whereas by removing them could help with both index cap issues and possible Panda penalties (too many similar and not useful pages). But is there any way to keep any possible link-equity of those subsequent pages by noindexing them? Or maybe the link equity is anyway preserved on those pages and on the overall domain as well? And, better, is there a way to move all that possible link equity to the first page in some way?

I hope this makes sense. Thank you for your help!

Hello everyone,

Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages?

For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page?

The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?

Any more ideas? Am I under any Google penalty of some sort (Panda, or what else?)

Thank you guys, your answer really clarified everything. No black hat, and no spam, absolutely. We should be ok then. I got confused when I read articles around (Randy also wrote something about it) where suggested to get rid of sub domains and put everything in sub-folders instead, but I guess that was just to benefit of link equity toward the main domain, otherwise wasted in the sub-domain... right?

Hello everyone,

My main website is:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com

Whereas the above site's related "affiliate" website is located on the subdomain below:

http://affiliates.virtualsheetmusic.com

I was wondering if having that "affiliate section" on a subdomain could affect the main website negatively in some way... or would be better to put it in a sub-folder on the main website, or even on a totally different domain.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Thanks for your reply, but I don't think that'll make any difference. I tried any kind of different title for the past year, and didn't make any difference. Also, have a look at all the sites before us and you'll see they have even longer titles and URLs without keywords inside exactly like us.

So... what else?

Hello everyone.

I am trying to understand why most of my website category pages don't show up in the in the first 50 organic results on Google, despite my high website DA and high PA of those pages. We used to rank high a few years ago, not clear why most of those pages have almost completely disappeared.

So, just to take one as an example, please, help me to understand why this page doesn't shows up in the first 50 organic search results for the keyword "cello sheet music":

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

I really can't explain why, unless we are under some sort of "penalization" or similar (a curse?!)... I have analyzed any possible metric, and can't find a logical explanation.

Looking forward for your thoughts guys!

All the best,

Fab.

Thank you for your posting, but I made further research on all this, and I tend to disagree with what you state.

It is now my understanding that if you remove a page from the index, that content is no longer considered by Google, because it is actually "out of the index"... therefore, if, let's say, a specific page or a specific section of the site which could have caused a site-wide "content" penalty is removed from the index, those pages are no longer affecting any algorithmic calculation on the quality of the site from a "contents" stand point, and such alleged "content-related penalty" should be lifted.

Anyone else can confirm that?

Sure, I understand, that makes sense. Thank you for your help!