How to do a full redesign of a Pandalyzed site? - Google Search and SEO forum at WebmasterWorld - WebmasterWorld

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How to do a full redesign of a Pandalyzed site?

aok88

12:17 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I have a site that got Pandalyzed back in Feb of 2011, the first Panda iteration. It gets about half it's traffic it used to. It seems to have improved a little this January.

I would like to save the domain as I believe it still has some juice, and lots of incoming links from over the years.

What is the best way for me to handle this and what are the things I absolutely need to include in the new redesign?

I know I need to 301 a couple hundred pages (the site is 10k+ pages) that have inbound links. I also plan on doing this to make it a far better site that will not be potentially hated by Panda:

Make sure there is no duplicate content
Add a canonical line for every page in the <head>
Have lots of good content above the fold
Have a good internal linking structure (although that is easier said then done, any suggestions?)
Ensure the page load time is fast
Ensure high quality code

What other things should I be sure to do/include to make this redesign take advantage of the old site's ranking strength and be loved by panda?

Marketing Guy

12:49 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

I really don't think any of those things will resolve a Panda penalty / filter.

Your ranking strength is still available - it's just being held back because of some of your content. Either ditch the content that was hit or revise it. Revising your content doesn't mean a rewrite - it means reviewing whether or not that page was a good result for the term it ranked for. In some cases (and I've still got some testing to do on this front), pages would rank for terms for (for example), people were looking to buy products. Any article, no matter how well it is written, is not a good result for this search query - hence, Panda.

aok88

5:10 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

Thanks. I was planning on re-writing and revising all the pages and adding original content in the form of articles to many of the top pages and deleting a lot of below average pages/content. Essentially it would be a totally new site. Think that would work?

Planet13

5:25 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Top Contributors Of The Month

Well, probably this thread belongs in the google forum on webmaster world.

[webmasterworld.com...]

On that forum, there is one person who claims a Panda recovery by moving to a new domain.

[webmasterworld.com...]

However, if you don't want to move your content to a new domain, then:

Your ranking strength is still available - it's just being held back because of some of your content. Either ditch the content that was hit or revise it.

That is probably really good advice. You should look at the content that DOESN'T PROVIDE VALUE to your USERS and delete it until you can improve the quality of the site. Just serve up 404 pages until you have replaced that content.

Marketing Guy

5:25 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Yeh that's a good step forward. I wouldn't be too hasty to remove the really low content pages - perhaps think about what rankings they used to have and whether or not an article is relevant or not.

Someone searching for "big blue widgets" might be looking to buy big blue widgets. In the past, an article may have been enough to rank for the term - I think the main change with Panda is that's not necessarily the case anymore (i.e. you need to be selling big blue widgets to rank for that term).

Whether or not moving from article content to a sales page will be enough to remove the penalty / filter is anyone's guess at this point. Been running a few tests on this myself, but I do think it would be possible to regain previous rankings with the right content.

Can to share some information on your case (without talking about specifics)? Of your content that was hit, were there many pages that honestly weren't good results for their rankings? I.e. were there better pages (more information) or more relevant pages (sites offering services instead of just information)?

aok88

7:01 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member

I really don't think any of those things will resolve a Panda penalty / filter.

I am not so sure. Things such as internal dupe content because of canonical issues, lots of broken links, content pushed down to below the fold, crawl errors, etc all play a part in Panda. I think that if a Pandalyzed ecommerce site is totally revised and redesigned, where all these things have been fixed, and the content is re-done where there is 1. more content per page, 2. more original content per page, then a site can get out of Panda.

Of your content that was hit, were there many pages that honestly weren't good results for their rankings? I.e. were there better pages (more information) or more relevant pages (sites offering services instead of just information)?

Of the 10,000 page ecommerce site, less than 500 are worth saving - which I will 301 redirect - and the rest were not that good at all. Less than 250 of the pages have totally oringal content i the form of an original article. The rest simply have generic (although not copied) 'product' descriptions.