Need Feedback on Google Panda Hit Site - Out of Ideas

[mikeatl]

Hi everyone. First time poster, long time reader but I could really use some honest feedback from knowledgeable people and forums just don't cut it. I have a 3 year old niche hobby site (http://goo.gl/aNwGy) that has become well established as a top 2 or 3 resource within my industry. We have more unique, expert curated content written on a daily basis then any other site in our industry, and are the only site in our niche that is syndicated through Google News. I've put a lot of money into hiring experts to write high quality content and have never engaged in any black hat SEO practices. Up until late February of this year this practice had paid off and was reflected in the steady Google search traffic growth we'd enjoyed throughout our first 2 1/2 years.

Then Panda hit and we dropped from about 3,000 unique visitors per day down to about 2,000 per day. Another month later we dropped to 1,400 visitors per day. I removed what little thin content I could find and kept on the best I could.

I purchased two competing sites and merged them into my main site, adding several more expert authors, a podcast, and a well known forum in the process. Thanks to this my core domain's Google search traffic slowly but surely returned. As of last week it was back up to about 2,500 unique visitors per day. Then the latest "Minor" Panda tweak on Oct 13th/14th hit late last week and my traffic dropped back down to 1700 visitors per day. Even before that happened I was being outranked by vastly inferior sites all across the board thanks to most all the large retailers within my niche having the budget to purchase large amounts of links.

So here's the deal, I'm just at a loss as to what to do now. I've tried to be as objective as I possibly can but it just doesn't make any sense. I literally have the best overall content in my industry. My writing staff include legitimate experts, including a former MLB All-Star, a Hall of Fame recognized Author, and a lot of lesser known, but very knowledgeable (and well known within my industry) college educated bloggers and enthusiasts. But I'm getting beaten by thin ecommerce sites who have insane amounts of paid links, various exact match domain cookie cutter sites, and lesser information sites which again engage heavily in link buying.

This seems completely counter to what Google was trying to achieve with the Panda update. I've done tons of reading on the specifics of the update since being hit in February and have hired several SEO experts to give me feedback on my own analysis as well as to perform their own research. We've made some small changes here and there and optimized the speed of the site. Everyone has confirmed that I have the best link profile - its legitimately natural and features links from all the top industry authority sites as well as many mainstream media outlets and everything in between. However somehow I continue to get my ass kicked by 1 dimensional sites which have nothing but paid and reciprocal links, and have no unique content that adds value for visitors. So there's only so much we've been able to change.

Am I really an unintended casualty of the Panda Algorithm (and its subsequent updates)? Or am I blind to one or more serious issues that make this ongoing Google ass kicking justifiable and well deserved? Either way any advice on what to do next would be sincerely appreciated. I'm a young guy with two kids and depend on my online business to pay the bills.

Thanks guys...

I just find it hard to believe that the right answer here is to cut my content budget out and go and use it to buy links everywhere - but that is exactly what Google has rewarding within my niche since late February.

[staunch]

Act as if Google doesn't exist. Don't worry about SEO. Make your site something people love enough to recommend to their friends. Something they would miss if it was gone.

After 3 years, people should love the site, and a sizable number of them should be coming to it directly. The fact that it has dropped out of existence and no one cares is a powerful indicator.

Imagine if StackOverflow was deindexed tomorrow. Its traffic would drop by 90%. People would be pissed at Google for it. Then they'd start visiting the site directly, because it's that valuable to them.

If users aren't pissed that they can't find you in Google you're not providing enough value.

It looks like no one is actually searching for your site:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=cardboard+connection

http://www.google.com/trends?q=hacker+news

http://www.google.com/trends?q=stack+overflow

BTW link shorteners are frowned upon on HN. The site is: http://www.cardboardconnection.com

[mikeatl]

I didn't say it dropped out of existence by any means. There is enough of a user base and word of mouth to sustain it and I'm by no means deindexed. I don't feel that Google "owes" me anything. The content that is often times outranking me is just flat out bad and my content is much better. It feels like something I'm doing / done is causing me to rank in spite of, rather then because of, my quality content. But I haven't done anything black hat and have always focused on user experience first, SEO second.

[staunch]

Your site is the very definition of a content farm, and worse yet, it's a niche content farm. No one visits content farms intentionally, they stumble across them via searches. Google is trying to kill the incentive to create these kinds of sites.

Some of your content might be written by real authorities, but it's still lightweight and relatively thin. Compare it to Wikipedia if you want to see the standard you have to meet.

Even if you do manage to game Google again it's likely you'll get slapped down in a future tweak. It's an arms race and they're not playing around anymore.

Build something that's strong enough to stand on its own.

[mikeatl]

Wow, I'm a bit perplexed by your assertion that my site is a content farm. Could you maybe provide some specifics and/or insight into what led you to that conclusion? I appreciate your candor, but personal feelings aside, my site doesn't meet the criteria for being content farm based on Wikipedia's definition (or any other definition that I'm familiar with). And I'm not sure why you keep making the assumption that people aren't visiting my site directly as I never said that. At least half my traffic is from direct / referral sources. I also have one of the more active user forums in my niche.

My site is cited by numerous museums, libraries, and reference sites as being an authoritative source for information related to my industry. And after reading your comment I looked through Wikipedia for several hours and my site is one of the most commonly referenced and cited resources for my subject matter. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Deck_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookie_cards

With all that said, since we cover niche news stories the length / depth of the content is dependent on the stories themselves. For instance, if a company releases an updated checklist for one of their sets, it may only give me enough information to create a 200 word article. But since its information that is both helpful and relevant to my readers, I publish it anyway. Maybe its time to cut that portion of my business out though and double down on other types of content so that I don't have news stories pulling the rest of my site's content down.

[staunch]

I should have been a little more careful with my phrasing. Your site fits the description of a content farm. It looks and smells like one.

My reference to Wikipedia was to the quality of their articles.

I know they're not exactly the same thing, but look at these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T206_Honus_Wagner

http://www.cardboardconnection.com/baseball/t206-wagner-card...

All your content appears to be about this thin, and you have tens of thousands of pages like this. That's what a content farm looks like to me and Google.

[mikeatl]

Thank you very much for the clarification. While I don't have tens of thousands of pages like that (my site has under 10,000 pages in all and lots of those pages are very informative, rich resources), your point is well taken. It prompted me to look back over my last couple of years worth of content in a whole new light. Thus far I've deleted several hundred old news articles with no residual value, and repurposed several dozen news stories into evergreen reference articles that present lasting value to readers. And I have only gone through about 1/3 of my site's articles thus far. The end result is going to be a much better, more useful site for my readers - which is really exciting.

So thank you for your insight, and thanks to everyone else for their feedback as it has been extremely helpful.

[mikeatl]

I get about 2000 searches or so per month of people looking specifically for my brand.For my particular niche that's actually really good though. Other then the manufacturers ( and one other big site, no one has enough brand recognition to generate the searches necessary to be graphed on Google Trends.

[OpenAlgorithm]

1) Make sure you have a Google Webmaster Tools account and see if your site has any warnings and/or other problems identified by Google.

2) Think about reducing the number of links on the homepage, and increasing the amount of content. Maybe a greeting for new users letting them know what your about. Overall your homepage is covered in links and as a user at first glance nothing stands out and I'm likely to hit the backspace button.

3) Create a better site structure (clear tiers of content), its very hard to navigate your site.

4) Get rid of empty pages like this: http://www.cardboardconnection.com/2011-topps-tier-one-baseb....

5) Make sure you aren't copying other's content and they aren't scrapping yours see: http://www.copyscape.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cardboardconnec...

6) Save posts like these for Twitter and Facebook: http://www.cardboardconnection.com/hockey/amazing-patches-fr...

7) A new design with larger font, different colour scheme and better plugins (commenting, ratings, etc) is in order.

8) Get rid of the Hot Auctions tab, link to eBay from the product page and not a secondary link farm looking tab.

9) Despite all these minor problems (and there's more) the quality of content on site is pretty poor, I guess if I was coming for the history of some cards maybe your site would be helpful but the content is written in a detached, impersonal tone that doesn't garner links or Google rankings.

Focus on writing high quality articles based on your/author's personal experience and expertise.

Check out www.copyblogger.com for more information on how to write well for the net.

10) Try and get in touch with Matt Cutts (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Matt_Cutts), he regularly helps out sites that feel like they have been harshly treated (proof: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ban-cutts-support-14164.h...)

11) After you have fixed all these problems submit a reconsideration request to Google.

[mikeatl]

Thanks for all the suggestions. In terms of content, that is exactly what I'm going for with the majority of my site - to be an objective resource for people looking for information on cards. The industry has been plagued with a lot of backroom dealing and unethical partnerships, so being an unbiased source has been one of my strongest selling points.

I've used a few market research services to randomly survey visitors to my site. The content itself was always gotten exceedingly positive marks from collectors, but non-collectors have given it mixed marks. That seems to substantiate the feedback I've also gotten on some Webmaster forums. The vast majority of collectors and people in the sports collectibles industry (and to a lesser extent people in the mainstream sports industry) regard my content as high quality and those outside of it give more of a mixed response.

What did you mean by http://www.cardboardconnection.com/2011-topps-tier-one-baseb... being an empty page though? Did it not show up correctly for you?

[shiningly]

1. Make sure it is not because of seasonality.

2. Access your site using a text browser like Lynx. Your first 5-15 links should be pointing to to content-rich pages which are unique.

3. Analyze the keywords. You said thin e-commerce sites are beating you. Are those keywords transactional or informational?

4. Continuing from point 3: Create silos. Separate your "information" and "commerce/transactions" neatly. Then, focus on the one which needs more attention. Add content/products and create more links.

5. Assuming you have analytics software installed: check your bounce rates, average duration/page, and pages/visit. See if something is amiss.

[mikeatl]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I've tried to silo the news / information content (http://goo.gl/uSDfm) away from the product / transactional related content (http://goo.gl/X3M8d) by assigning them to different categories. Do you think I should go further then that? I've considered subdomains but have held off because of the subsequent need to 301 so many urls.Maybe there's another option?

Product wise I have a bigger database then any other website. Each product profile features a mix of product info, reviews, price comparisons, and checklists. So they are a combination of both types of content in a way.

[shiningly]

Subdomains are not a must. However, your titles will kill you. "101" - it doesn't mean anything to a search engine. "tips", "information" -> those mean something. If you have products, make sure to add "buy" or "purchase" or any such keyword which screams "transactions". You don't have it right now. tl;dr: Help the search engines to categorize your silos properly. Same goes for subcategories.

Good luck.

[clscott]

I visited your site and it "looks" like a link farm.

There is no content on your homepage, it's 100% links.

I also visited your top level pages (clicked on Baseball,Football etc) and they are 90% links.

You need to move some actual content to those pages. They should at the very least having have content similar to the third level pages (like http://goo.gl/3RFqI).

You seem to have new articles on a regular basis, having fresh real content (not just links) on your 1st and 2nd level pages can only help, especially if your external inbound links are pointing to those pages.

My $0.02

[mikeatl]

Thanks you very much for the insight. That is something I've struggled with because it seems like from a user useability perspective having those types of 2nd level sub-index pages would be necessary in order to find and navigate through all my content. I have 6,000 some odd various articles with new content published daily. Do you have some examples of online news / magazine sites that do a good job of placing real content on high level pages without sacrificing useability? Again, thanks for the comment.

[clscott]

You mention news and magazine sites, they are very topical and change out almost all of their content on a regular basis. Your site very definitely doesn't do that and but should.

An easy to find example:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/index.html

This is what your home page looks like now, except I'd have more "fresh" content and less duplicate content.

Additionally, under each of the three feature images/stories I'd include the first paragraph from that article under the image with a meaningfully named link to the article.

Try to reduce the duplicate content, for example you have the same article teaser for "2012 Topps Heritage Baseball Cards" image,headline,paragraph on your home page and at least two other pages:

* http://www.cardboardconnection.com/baseball/ * http://www.cardboardconnection.com/sports-cards-sets/

And it;s the only content on those secondary pages. Google will definitely frown on that.

If you have fresh content, you should be using it.

On your second level pages put your most recent article teasers on the page (The teaser is the image/headline/first paragraph combo) like on the third level pages, do your best to bubble the actual content up.

[mikeatl]

Excellent feedback. Thank you!

[pjy04]

I know how you feel. I got out of the content race a year ago and it seems like Panda destroyed 9 out of 10 sites out there focused in the content space.

The best thing you can continually do is push out better content, get linkbacks and decrease your bounce rate.

Have you thought about putting adsense on your site?

[mikeatl]

Thanks for the response. It doesn't seem like Google fully "gets" my site. It appears they often times try to rank me as if I'm a mainstream sports site but then overlook me for my area of specialty (sports collectibles). For instance, I may rank for the term "Lou Gehrig" or "Hope Solo" but not for "Lou Gehrig cards" or "baseball cards". Its bizarre since mainstream sports is so much more competitive an area. However a mainstream sports fan is going to bounce after reading an article unless they also happen to be a collector. That kind of traffic is better directed to mainstream sports sites.

I already have links from all the main industry sites and think I've done a good job of onsite SEO. What else can I do to help Google more appropriately "theme" my site and understand its specific area of authority?

[mikeatl]

As for Adsense, I have tried it in the past but the payoff per click for my niche is really low. I prefer eBay for this site because I can incorporate it in a way that actually adds value to the user experience.

Just out of curiosity, where did you go after leaving the content publishing arena?

[teyc]

is your site getting scraped by other people? what about site response times?