Hi Ty, I must admit, I had problems following you properly.

If I understood correctly. You're simply redirecting from /old to /new

However, you renamed old to old2

If that is correct, then the answer is no, there will be no issues with renaming the old url to old2.

You could also completely delete old2 and it will still work. The server doesn't check for the existence of the page, before it does the redirect.

I have a question though, why did you create new pages and not just improve the content on the existing page?

I'm not sure what the correct term is, but I've visited websites that require me to like page 1 of an article, to view page 2. Little annoying but fair enough, they wrote the content, I clearly find it of value as I want page 2.

I run a download website, with user generated content. We used to only allow downloads to members, this resulted in 5,000+ new signups per day and a massive userbase.

We now allow guests to download content, the majority are freeloaders, not even a thank you to the artist.

I am about to employ a system for guests, that forces them to like, tweet or G+ the download, for it to begin. If they don't, no download.

Are there any SEO considerations here? The page this will be implemented on, isn't a crawlable page.

Cheers.

It's still linked, so Google will still read it. I just honestly don't know how Google will interpret it.

Is this something that's in place? What is webmaster tools showing?

Google treats sub domains, almost as different domains.

I would keep sitemaps relative to their own subdomain.

Rankings drop and traffic increases, most logical explanation is because you're ranking for more keywords or other sources are sending traffic. Check analytics, see how people are finding you, for what keywords etc.

If you have no sudden drops in traffic, it's unlikey the issue is Penguin.

However, moving forward, buying cheap links, from spammy sources, is building a foundation that won't get you far.

Before building links, do as much research as you can. You need a solid strategy to achieve long lasting ranks and avoid penguin.

Hi Highland, I truly wish I was in a niche, where it was viable to use Adwords. So much more reliable and consistent.

As we give away content and don't sell anything, adwords is a no-go.

I only wish I were hit by Penguin, I feel that's a much easier mess to clean up. Panda to me, is the bigger evil.

I do feel ATM, I am looking for a needle in a haystack.

But that said, I must remain hopeful!

Glad to have helped Gavin, I hope you manage to find those links causing the problems.

Good luck!

Gavin it could be an error, or it's just talking about your domain as a whole. Either way, the 112 is the number that's most likely correct. I cannot imagine you'd have 3,164 links on a page.

A simple test, would be to view another page. Does the 3,164 figure change? I'd fathon a guess, that it will stay the same.

Find which of the domains are linking to you so aggressively, are they using overly optimised anchor text? It could be that you've been a victim of negative SEO.

Regardless of what some SEO's will tell you, it's negative SEO is very real. Google is NOT smart enough to know whether you paid for the link, or a competitor did.

1.6 million links, from 224 root domains, means that some or many of those domains contain links site wide. i.e in their sidebars, footers or even main navigation.

So basically you have 224 websites linking to you, but between those websites, they're sending you 1.6 million links.

This is itself could be a problem, especially if the anchor text for a lot of your links, is over optimised and not very well distributed throughout your pages.

Take a look at the 224 websites linking and figure out which are likely to be causing a problem under Penguin.

It's worth noting that title tags are often misused. Either because webmasters are trying to spam their keywords or because they're not aware of it's proper use.

Obviously sets the subject of the page.

Should only be used for sub sections of the page. For example:

User Reviews

is good usage, because its a sub section of the page.

Featured Product

,

Online Users

aren't really sub sections of a page, so I'd avoid using title tags for things like that.

Hi Gavin, I assume you're talking about the moz toolbar? I've not used it for a number of years.

However, from what you've said, is it possible that the data in the tool bar i.e 3,000 internal links is looking at the domain as a whole and when you click page attributes, it's figure is relative to the page?

In that case, going forward, I would drop the .asp extension and 301 redirect, just ensure they're all working. Even if that means going through one by one.

Slightly off topic, but moving forward I would work on ways to increase the back links to internal pages.

Hi Sarah, just a thought, rather than looking at your competitors pages to see what they're doing, why not look at what you're not doing.

What can you do, to add more value for your visitors. User reviews, videos etc etc.

In terms of content, are your product descriptions the same as your competitors? If so, Google will be viewing both pages similarly and then something tips the balance. It can be inbound links, extra perceived value or even internal architecture. Perhaps their internal linking is better?

Spamming with <h>tags isn't the best strategy.</h>

Do you have a URL we can look at to compare?

Hi Roberto, to conserve your back link profile, you must conserve your websites archetecture. Most importantly your URL structure.

If you have a page on blue widgets, /category/blue-widgets.html that has 10 back links and your new url structure is /category/blue-widgets/ then you'll lose the back links and history. /category/blue-widgets/ will be seen as a brand new page.

Wordpress has various permalink options, but whether any of those fit in with your current structure is another thing.

This will mean you'll have to do 1 of 2 things.

1. Create a custom solution, to ensure url structure is kept the same.
2. Create 301 redirects from old pages to new pages.

Both solutions will work, but number 1 is definitely most preferable. But if all else fails, number 2 is at least going to forward the link juice to your new pages.

Hope that helps

Paul

This is a serious question, I'd also like some advice on my experience so far with the Panda. One of my websites, http://goo.gl/tFBA4 was hit on January 19th, it wasn't a massive hit, but took us from 25,000 to 21,000 uniques per day. It survived Panda completely prior. The only thing that had changed, was an upgrade in the CMS, which caused a lot of duplicate content, i.e 56 copies of the homepage, under various URLs. These were all indexed in Google.

I've heard varying views, as to whether this could trigger Panda, I believe so, but i'd appreciate your thoughts on it.

There was also the above the fold update on the 19th, but we have 1 ad MAX on each page, most pages have none. I hate even having to have 1 ad. I think we can safely assume it was Panda that did the damage.

Jan 18th was the first Panda refresh, since we upgraded our CMS in mid-late December.

As it was nothing more than a refresh, I feel it's safe to assume, that the website was hit, due to something that had changed on the website, between the Jan 18th refresh and the one previous.

So, aside from fixing the bugs in the CMS, I felt now was a good time to put a massive focus on user metrics, I worked hard and continuing to spend a lot of time, improving them.

1. Reduced bounce rate from 50% to 30% (extremely low in the niche)
2. Average page views from 7 to 12
3. Average time on site from 5 to almost 8 minutes
4. Plus created a mobile optimised version of the site
5. Page loading speeds slashed.

Not only did the above improvements have no positive effect, traffic continued to slide and we're now close to a massive 40% loss. Btw I realise neither mobile site nor page loading speeds are user metrics.

I fully appreciate that my website is image heavy and thin on text, but that is an industry wide 'issue'. It's not an issue to my users, so it shouldn't be an issue to Google.

Unlike our competitors, we actively encourage our users to add descriptions to their content and provide guidelines, to assit them in doing so.

We have a strong relationship with our artists, as we listen to their needs and develop the website accordingly. Most of the results in the SERPs, contain content taken from my website, without my permission or permission of the artist. Rarely do they give any credit.

If user metrics are so important, why on earth has my traffic continued to slide?

Do you have any advice for me, on how I can further improve my chances of recovering from this?

Fortunately, despite my artists download numbers being slashed in half, they've stuck by me and the website, which speaks volumes.

As the drop coincides perfectly with Penguin, then it's definitely a backlink issue.

That's nonsense. Talk to Google about what? The automatic penalty that was applied? That apparently they cannot do anything about.

It's nice that you presume those that have been hit, have done something wrong. It seems common among those who have managed to dodge Panda, to presume they safe and that the rest of the world has done something to deserve their fate.

In my niche, it's image heavy and low on textual content. This is by nature and not due to any wrong doing. My user metrics are amazing and yet my website was hit by Panda recently.

I don't want to come across as being harsh, but I do feel your response was a little presumptuous and insensitive.