More Panda 4.0 Findings: Syndication, User Engagement, Index

I wonder if they're also penalizing the original writer of the material that's being copied. Also, there are a couple of recipes that I wrote myself, but copied to two different blogs I own. Can they see that I'm the original writer on both blogs? If not, I may just have to remove the recipes from one of the blogs. I'll say that I need to research it more, but doubt I'll find specific information since Google never explains anything properly, if at all.

Quoted from the article Catcop left the link for: "To make matters worse, some of the partners were more powerful SEO-wise than the sites syndicating the content. That led to some of the partners outranking the websites that created the original content. Not good, and now that Panda 4.0 has struck, it's obviously even worse.

If you're going to syndicate your content, make sure the websites consuming your content handle attribution properly. In a perfect world, they would use rel=canonical to point back to your content. It's easy to set up and can help you avoid an attribution problem."

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It sounds like by syndicated content, they mean to point back (maybe as in a clickable URL) to where the original content was taken from? He says to use syndicated content sparingly from what I am reading and that it does not need to be nuked (stopped) all together.

From what I understand syndicated means that it is the same content that was copied from elsewhere.....I wonder if this is where it will hurt to have the same listings on both sites, if it has the same content.

I don't know. I'm thinking out loud. I do know that there has been talk about this (duplicate content) before, so maybe they've finally reached that point about duplicated content.

"rel=canonical to point back to your content"
I wonder what rel canonical is.

I'm still reading...

Catcop, thanks for posting.

@tiptoptreasures
That's ok, I think out loud too.

I wonder if that was some of the reasons of Bonanza having Amazon links, because of people like Marianne that know their stuff on optimizing keywords and such for searches. The boyz could see it's wasn't their website bringing in the people but the ones that kept on top of "search engine" search formats and such.

I just finished reading the article and came across the "More Syndication Problems – Downstream Considerations" section that may at least partially answer my question and was wondering how others are translating it. While I will break it down according to how I'm translating it, please refer to the original text under that section via the link @catcop provided to make your own assessment.

It's basically saying that even those writers who have their original content being used on other sites, whether with or without permission, could possibly suffer if the attribution of their content wasn't handled properly. I'm not entirely sure what attribution he's referring to -- if it's a matter of properly citing the source of the content and/or a matter of including the right HTML code to tell search bots not to index (look at) the material on the sites where it's copied.

From my understanding it's also saying that those copying your material may be getting more credit for it (or benefiting more from it) if their site is practicing better SEO than you are on your site. In other words, your content on their site is outranking the content on your site simply because they have better SEO throughout their site.

While the article offers solutions, they really only pertain to sites you've given permission to use your content. What is one to do when someone is copying your material without your consent? There's no way of knowing who's copied your material. So, I need to figure out how to keep peeps from copying stuff. I've seen many sites that don't allow you to highlight or otherwise save/copy anything on a page, so there's definitely some sort of coding required for that.

What the article is saying about keyword hoarding most likely doesn't apply to anyone here since we've kept each other in-the-know about proper SEO and keyword usage. As I've always said from the get-go, you should focus on no more than 5-8 keywords on any one page, depending on its length and topic. If you've adhered to that practice, then you should be fine.

The example the article refers to where a homepage is ranking for thousands of keywords is most likely a page that has a bunch of hidden or visible meta tags -- most of which don't pertain to the content of the page. I'm sure you've seen those pages that have a meaningless list of keywords all jumbled up into one paragraph.

Well, that sort of thing can also be hidden in code or text that matches the background color so you can't see it. That's been a big no-no for years now, so that's nothing new and something everyone here should already be aware of (if you've been paying attention, that is). LOL

However, it looks like even having a page listing all of your categories (with or without descriptions) might also take a hit -- like an About Our Products page that lists all of your product categories and includes a description for each that lists what's included in each category. At least that's the impression I'm getting by what is said in that section.

Although, the solution provided sort of contradicts that impression, claiming that it's okay as long as it's high quality, thorough content about your category since it will naturally target thousands of keywords. The only part of that section that makes sense is where it suggests understanding your niche, knowing what people are searching for, and providing killer content that deserves to rank highly.

In other words, you'd have to write a LOT of quality content in order to justify targeting all those keywords. However, it should be spread out throughout your site and not just on one or two pages -- like your home page or an About Our Products page. So, you basically need to focus on a specific topic/category, including its related keywords, for each page without using keywords specific to another category.

That's really confusing, though. I mean, it's common practice to have one page to relate everything you sell -- even in the case of an information site where all topics are linked to and briefly discussed on a main page. You're basically providing an overview of everything that's included somewhere in your site on one easy to view page. I don't know why that would be considered a reason to penalize a site in organic searches.

One interesting thing to note is that the Panda update rolls out monthly. So, if you see any sudden changes in traffic, then you'll know whether or not you need to make changes to appease the bear or simply analyze what is working to increase traffic and make sure you're using that same strategy throughout your site.

If your traffic has taken a nose dive or isn't improving after making changes, then you need to continue analyzing the problem and making changes where necessary. If your traffic is at an acceptable level and seems to be holding steady, analyze what is drawing in the most traffic and holding the interest of your viewers. Then make changes to the less popular pages using the same formula as on the popular pages.

As we all know, staying on top of the data tools like Google Analytics provide (albeit less useful without keyword data) is what will help you determine what is and isn't working so you can fix what isn't. If you have your own site hosted somewhere like Presto, you should have more detailed data available to you via your host's analytics tools. You simply need to use it to make improvements where needed to appease the bear, which should be referred to as a Grizzly rather than a Panda (LOL), improve your organic search ranking, and thereby increase traffic.

P.S. -- There's a little bunny feeding outside of my window. He's so cute. (Sorry, just had to share that) LOL

Yes, I think that is a great idea. I would love it if that happened. I think you are the perfect person to approach him about this, what do you think? I'm going to go head and join. I do not mind posting some questions to ask (have to make sure I understand something about those questions in the first place though) but I'm really feeling like you are THE person that would do well at this...

I'll have to take care of that tomorrow as I'm already pooping out tonight since I didn't get much sleep last night. It was a good sleep, just not long enough and I didn't take a nap today. Besides, we should take a bit of time to get our questions together before presenting them.

Do you want me to present them all in my post or do you want to post your own questions over there? It doesn't matter to me either way. I just want to make sure we're not duplicating questions; thereby making nuisances of ourselves. LOL

I was going to look up the rel="canonical" code for you earlier, but had to run since it was time to finish up the scrumptious din-din I made (Swiss steak in the crock pot for six hours, au gratin potatoes, green beans, and carrots -- the meat was soooo tender!). Anywho, here's a link to About.com's explanation:

What is rel=canonical and Why Should I Use It?

The first sentence pretty much explains what the purpose of it is: When you run a data driven site or have other reasons why a document [or parts thereof] might be duplicated, it’s important to tell search engines which copy is the master copy, or in the jargon, the “canonical” copy.

Where it goes is in the code for the link -- just like the target="_blank" code for making the link open in a new tab. Example: <a href="http://www.mywebsite.com" target="_blank" rel="canonical" >. So, by including that code, you're telling the search engines that the page you're linking to consists of the original content so the bots will index the copied text from that page instead of yours.

The other option mentioned is the noindex code, which is a meta tag that tells search engines not to index a page in their search results. This isn't something I would ever consider using because it has to be done at the page level -- meaning that you're telling the search engines not to index YOUR page so it won't appear in search results.

The ONLY time I would use this is if I'm creating an entire page of someone else's content on my site. That way the owner of the content is the one getting the credit for that page via their own site since mine won't be found in search results. However, this isn't something I foresee myself having a use for because I usually include quotes within my own text, citing my source.

After reading about this, I'm beginning to wonder whether or not I should start including the rel="canonical" code whenever I include links to someone else's content. I've never heard of that code before, but certainly want to make sure I'm giving proper attribution to the owner of the content; hence the reason I always cite a source, which is the legal thing to do.

At the same time, I may not always know if the content I'm copying is the original copy or not. I certainly wouldn't want to tell the search engines that the source page I'm copying from is the original version of the content if the owner of the source page is not the owner of the content.

That would be one good question to post on the blog. I just hope my basic explanation helped some.

I'm going to compile a list of questions posed here before posting them on the blog site so I can be sure we get them all in one post. To help me see them all easier, I'll be "editing" posts with questions to highlight the questions. Of course, I won't be changing anything within a post other than that. I'm just making the questions stand out so I can see them more easily as I scroll down the page looking for them.

Before compiling the list, I'm going to read the first article he wrote about his initial findings to see if any questions have already been answered or if there are others to be asked. I've already found one more question to pose after reading the comments section of the article @catcop linked to.

A statement he made in answer to someone's comments (see below) regarding user engagement and bounce rates has me wondering about the spam traffic (or referer spam) that many sites have a problem with (particularly Blogger sites). I'm not sure exactly how referer spam works, but I've been having a problem with it on my Purple Iris Perspective blog for a long time now.

The referer spam generates logged visits to my blog, but reading the info I've found on Google's Blogger forum about it has me confused because it says that my blog isn't actually being linked to and my pages aren't actually being seen during those "visits". So, I'm wondering if this fake traffic is being calculated in my user engagement and bounce rate metrics. Here's what Glenn said:

"User engagement is critically important when it comes to Panda. Low dwell time in particular is an important factor that helps Google determine if a user was happy with the search result. In aggregate, low dwell time can absolutely kill a site SEO-wise (from a Panda standpoint)."

Since this was such a drastic algorithm change that has tightened the noose even more on those who abuse the system, once again taking innocent peeps down with them, I want to make sure I completely understand how sites are being ranked/penalized. I need to know before I continue with my informational site for my other biz, which includes a significant amount of content from the SBA site that the public has permission to use. Even this forum has a lot of content that could possibly be hurting our ranking if it's not properly attributed.

Speaking of which, I believe I've figured it out that he's referring to using the rel=canonical code as part of the attribution when copying/linking to someone else's content so the bots know where the duplicate content originated. Simply citing the author's name and source site isn't enough because that's simply for readers. The bots apparently need that code to know, but I'm still going to ask Glenn just for clarification.

Okay, on to read that first article...