Managing multiple client sites using a single WMT account

[slwdirops]

There have been recent posts about the impact of individual site quality having impact over a portfolio of sites if they are associated, in this case via a master WMT tools account. I am concerned that I am not following best practices if this is the case. I am currently managing over 200 client sites, they each have there own unique GA account to which I am added as an administrator. I have verified these sites in WMT using the GA verification method.

With the various updates throughout the year individual sites have been impacted by Panda and Penguin, which have been addressed and rankings reasonably recovered. However, since November 22 however the entire portfolio is off over 20% with some having lost over 50% of their historical traffic. I am concerned that the better performing sites are being impacted by the weaker sites as a result of their association in a master WMT account.

Keep in mind, many of these site were transferred from other hosting providers with existing issues. Content is driven by the client and my impact is dependent on client effort which is minimal. So apart from standard SEO strategies and building value driven backlinks doing specific site based changes is restricted. Could their association be causing the drop in performance. If so, why would this be happening in reverse, the weaker sites improve?

Thank you in advance for any advice or input

[scooterdude]

I should say welcome to Webmasterworld, so I am :)

If so, why would this be happening in reverse, the weaker sites improve?

Are you saying that sites with low traffic have improved performance after being added to your master gwmt account ?

[slwdirops]

Oops, proofreading mistakes - The weaker sites have not improved. to the contrary their % of loss is on the higher end of the scale.

[cabbie]

Hi Slwdirops,
perhaps you need to look at those "standard SEO strategies".
What was once standard practice may now be actually frowned upon and causing problems for you.
Seems to make sense that weaker sites will suffer more from those practices as the better sites will still have some things weighing to their benefit.

[slwdirops]

Cabbie, what I am referring to as standard SEO strategies are insuring that each Page has a unique Meta Titles relevant to content. Unique descriptive tags, proper h tagging relevant to the content, a XML site map etc. Backlink development only to trusted sites. Unfortunately, at times a site will come to us with the baggage you describe. Many of our clients use their sites for validation purposes, growing dominance in the marketplace is a secondary concern, but we have several that take an aggressive position on growth. If the poorer performing sites, sites that have been impacted by penguin or EMD or other ranking penalties, are effecting the rankings of sites not effected by these changes due only to their being associated on my master client GWMT I need to take action. But this means that, no longer is there a single point of access. Accessing each client site WMT will require unique authentication, tedious.

[cabbie]

I have a mixture of adult, pharm and mainstream sites in my WT a/c.
Some are treated as authority websites, some as average and some as penalised.
Google is not holding it against me or any of those websites that some are less desirable than others.
I doubt they would paint all yours with the one brush, unless, of course, they all were making the same mistake.

[tedster]

The date (November 22) may be important. Nov 21/22 was when "something" happened, most definitely. We had decent buzz about SERP changes in our monthly update thread and later learned that Google confirmed a Panda Update [webmasterworld.com].

But that wouldn't explain why you see EVERY site in your 200 site portfolio being affected. Statistically, it seems way outside any accidental correlation. Panda is supposed to be aimed at site's whose content is not actually spam, but not really good quality, either. The Panda algorithm is a response to content created merely to rank (content farms e.g.) rather than to be of value to visitors. However, they have had a lot of trouble with sites that are scraped - choosing the scraper to rank rather than the original content creator.

All that said I still can't see how a Panda Update would affect all 200 sites at once - created by different owners, with different amounts of time online and on different topics. Does not compute.

Like cabbie, I have supervision of WMT for a good variety of sites. Some were clearly penalized before they came to me, some got the "unnatural backlinks" message but only a portion of those lost search traffic, and others are truly thriving and setting new records for themselves. So I don't see that using the standard way of sharing WMT accounts creates a situation where the whole portfolio is penalized, either.

[scooterdude]

IMHO

Its the webmaster/account owner , not the sites that most significant, if you look at it that way, it means that s Google "saint" managing adult, gambling, pharm, historical journal, top line eCommerce site, penalized or not, would have no problem, initially,

Plus I think the account holders "score" shifts,

just an opinion