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My question is what should I do with this site? I'm tempted to re-jig it and use it as a doorway site to my main site, but dont want to get penalised for it. I dont want to just leave it as it is either because it's pretty pointless in its current state. The doorway site option is very tempting, and many of my competitors use them and get away with it, but knowing my luck with google, I'm bound to end up getting penalised!
My guess is that if your main site is doing as miserably as you state, that using that test site as a doorway to your main site wouldn't be considered spamming. The basic essence of spamming is having multiple sites come up high on a SERP. If only one site of yours does well for a SERP, I wouldn't call you a spammer.
I dont want to just leave it as it is either because it's pretty pointless in its current state
Wow, I wish I had a site I could just throw away and not be worried about results. Why not use it to test theories out? Change one element at a time and see what kind of effect it produces. I say one at a time so you can be as close to "sure" about what affected the SERPs as possible.
For example, why not see what happens when you match the title tag with H1 and H2? Will there or won't there be a Florida type penalty?
Or how about using your keywords at the end of paragraphs instead of the beginning, just to see if it changes the SERPs?
I'd decide on what is important to me in terms of optimization techniques and put it to the test, being very patient and waiting to see what Google does in its next update. Then go for another change, and another...
If I were you:
Put some links on the high-ranking site to the other one.
OR
Exchange the content of the two :-)
By the way, did you buy an expired domain?
What do you mean exactly about the penalty?
i had H1 for title H2 for sub title and my site (300) pages got thrown out!. No matter how much i look at my pages i cannot figure out why, (definately no spam tactics).
I am just hoping it will get picked up again on the next update.
cf
What I've now done with this site is I've put several well placed links to my commercial site. I couldn't change the content of the two sites, since the high ranking site with the free webhost is obviously not asp enabled. It is quite frustrating. I have another non-profit site that I've got to pr5 too. All 3 of my sites have got good listings in the odp, but google has only recognised the listings for the two non profit sites, which I guess is sods law. If I was to change content of either site though, wouldn't that lose me some page rank?
As for Florida: the site, which occupies #1 for its main key phrase, was dropped completely for the phrase for a few weeks but has been back at number 1 for two weeks now. I didn't make any changes to the site to get it back in there. The site gets crawled and updated every single day, whereas my commercial site hardly ever gets crawled, and none of the pages google puts in its index ever seem to stick. A few weeks ago, there were 200 pages of that site in google's index, now its wittled it down to 30 and the number is still dropping.
The non commercial site was high ranking even before it got in the odp and accumulated page rank. Common sense would say to copy the format of the high ranking site for the commerical one, but with the store system I use, the only way I could do that is to make some kind of entry page. Would this be a wise move?
Bobby ###### For example, why not see what happens when you match the title tag with H1 and H2? Will there or won't there be a Florida type penalty?####
Title tag, h1 and one h2 are all the same pre and post florida. As I said, I was dropped for about a fortnight then went straigh back in at number 1.
I've now changed the site slightly to feature the key phrase I want my commercial site to rank for - a very competitive term. I've already got to #21 with just changing the title tag, h1 and h2. I've now repeated the phrase a few more times in the body and will see tomorrow if this gets me any higher.
What do you mean exactly about the penalty?
colinf, it's just hypothesis but many of us who have lost top ranking sites for specific search phrases after Florida believe there is a filter or OOP (over optimization penalty) at play here.
One of the 1st theories had to do with the title and h1 tags being identical.
I am convinced about a filter based on the sites I have seen disappear completely from SERPs. Just what triggers the filter is unclear and the basis for much conjecture.
I personally believe it has to do with very commercial terms being repeatedly used in important SEO techniques - hence title, h1, domain name etc.
Silent_Bob, are your title, h1 and h2 all the same exact phrase (all 3 the same) or do you mean the same as each was before?
I would leave the informational high-ranking site as it is, and only put some links on it to your commercial site.
The fact that your informational site was buried during Florida would get me nervous, though. All I have read about Dominique/Esmeralda and the way they handled Florida tells me they will do this again, and some day it will be a lasting new algo.
As rfgdxm1 said, maybe there's more to it to learn.
Silent_Bob, are your title, h1 and h2 all the same exact phrase (all 3 the same) or do you mean the same as each was before?
both! They are all the same exact phrase, and unchanged before and after florida.
Does it rely on session variables? Or does it have long query strings (e.g. page.asp?productid=123456&visitorID=98734&zip=55555&rnd=178395)?
Did you change how the pages were written recently? Not the HTML code, but the backend code generating them? If using session variables, did you site get moved onto a cluster?
These things could make spidering the site more difficult.
Your store runs on ASP.
Does it rely on session variables? Or does it have long query strings (e.g. page.asp?productid=123456&visitorID=98734&zip=55555&rnd=178395)?Did you change how the pages were written recently? Not the HTML code, but the backend code generating them? If using session variables, did you site get moved onto a cluster?
These things could make spidering the site more difficult.
It has urls in the form : [silentbobsstore.xyz...]
Google did crawl it when I first changed to asp, and indexed 200 pages (most without title or description though - just plain urls). None of these pages seem to stick and they eventually get dropped from the listings. I have seen similar stores that use asp get good rankings though. In my case google has just never recognised any of my backlinks for my commerical site despite the fact I have an odp and google directory listing and at least 20 pr4 links elsewhere. I've never done anything that could be considered spam with the site, so cant see any reason why I would have been penalised. In fact its the cleanest site I have, and yet the poorest performing!
Rankings Poor - What to do?
Examine the #1 on your SERP.
Rankings Poor - What to do?
Examine the #1 on your SERP.
Yeah - I dont quite get that title either, they modified my original one.
Obviously doing it clean doesn't pay off ;-)
> In fact its the cleanest site I have, and yet the poorest performing!
Obviously doing it clean doesn't pay off ;-)
Sure seems that way! Many of my competitors use doorway pages, multiple url redirects with targeted keyphrases in them (e.g. www.key1-key2.com), alt tag spam, hidden text etc... and have pr5 or 6 and get the top slots in the serps. They weren't even affected by the florida update which begs the question that if that update was supposed to filter out spam and over seo'd sites then why did it do such a bad job of it?
With 3 billion pages this must be very hard.
Anyway, there are rules for ranking high, and SEO is about following them and adapting as fast as you can if they change.
