Highlight : SEO Plugin > avoid Google Panda penalty

[Sovereign Grace Singles]

13 hours ago, Gauravk said:

Can you please shed some light on what all you have done for W3C Validation, maybe a new topic if its too much to share, as that can help others too. 

Thanks in advance.

I hired @Adlago to go through the site in order to get it to validate. He did much of the work.

I recommend Adlago as he does great work. 

Edited August 4, 2019 by Christforums

[bfarber]

It should be noted that for the most part the site should validate fine out of the box. It's possible third party plugins or applications may not validate, or old content stored prior to upgrading or content imported via RSS may not validate, but generally the site should validate fine.

[sobrenome]

For those interested in SEO, please check this post: 

 

[Sovereign Grace Singles]

On 8/4/2019 at 1:55 AM, Gauravk said:

Hi William,

Can you share how you are measuring your traffic?

Most accurate is Google Analytics and it seems you maybe counting the cpanel or other type of direct traffic that doesn't filter the bots.

1.6 Million Alexa ranking doesn't tie with 500+ visitors daily. It should have been 500K-600K easily.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/christforums.com#trafficstats

We were getting close to 1K unique traffic earlier, which now dropped since 2 week and our Alexa is around 300-400K

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/carnity.com#trafficstats

Love to hear from others about their real traffic metrics, which very rare user share here.

Many thanks for the suggestion, I will def give this a shot.

Any update from your site since you implemented this.....?

Didn't have the Alexa code installed  a week or so. The certified ranking according to them included no traffic being reported for a week.

I'm not using Google Analytics but since the beginning of my site's creation use AWStats in Cpanel.

Real traffic from Alexa, at least in my experience, has resulted in a lower ranking than not paying for the certified metrics. Alexa seems too generous with its estimated metrics.

William

[AlexWebsites]

On 8/16/2019 at 1:12 PM, Christforums said:

Didn't have the Alexa code installed  a week or so. The certified ranking according to them included no traffic being reported for a week.

I'm not using Google Analytics but since the beginning of my site's creation use AWStats in Cpanel.

Real traffic from Alexa, at least in my experience, has resulted in a lower ranking than not paying for the certified metrics. Alexa seems too generous with its estimated metrics.

William

If I were you I would move to google analytics. I pay no attention or use Alexa or any Cpanel analytics. In fact, I’ve shut them off in WHM to save resources.

Plug the tag right into your ACP and start measuring real traffic with google analytics. 

If you don’t want to use that, try quantcast. I actually use both on my websites to measure my traffic.

[sobrenome]

On 7/6/2019 at 8:31 AM, Durango said:

Hi

I would like to hightlight a plugin i recently ordered to @DawPi :

This plugin automatically adds a noindex to all topics containing less than XXX words (lets say 100 words for instance) you can update the number anytime and reset the noindex

This is a powerful SEO plugin that helps to avoid Google Panda penalty that might happen on communities with large numbers of thin content topics

I recommend it !

 

 

 

Do you have any statistics about the use of this plugin? 😀

[Lucas James]

On 7/8/2019 at 7:38 PM, Durango said:

Too early to say but will give some feedback in a few months

 

On 7/8/2019 at 8:47 PM, Christforums said:

I think we need to wait for the entire site to be reindexed during which time no-index might be dropped. I suspect this process may take 8-12 weeks. Until then!

@Durango @Christforums

Its been 6 months now we heard from you guys. What are the results after using this plugin?

[Durango]

Hi

Great results, we could follow the performance with the google search console

and we noticed SEO improvements of 30% (without any other action) on sites with this plugin

>> logical  : remove poor content and google will love you  !

next step is : update Invision sitemap by removing the noindex topics (so that GSC doenst report errors of noindex urls in sitemap)

the plugin author replied to me about this feature : Option to remove noindex item from the sitemap and also ping the search engines after that would cost 195$.

who is ok to participate to this feature ? i go with $50,  who else ?

Edited May 18, 2020 by Durango

[Fast Lane!]

On 5/18/2020 at 12:34 PM, Durango said:

Hi

Great results, we could follow the performance with the google search console

and we noticed SEO improvements of 30% (without any other action) on sites with this plugin

>> logical  : remove poor content and google will love you  !

next step is : update Invision sitemap by removing the noindex topics (so that GSC doenst report errors of noindex urls in sitemap)

the plugin author replied to me about this feature : Option to remove noindex item from the sitemap and also ping the search engines after that would cost 195$.

who is ok to participate to this feature ? i go with $50,  who else ?

Does this examine only the first post or do replies add up?  Sometimes post 1 is thin but the follow up posts are robust.

[Durango]

Hi

Good question

of course it gets updated when there are replies

[GTServices]

Be cautious when NOINDEXing topics in masses. 

If you made a mistake NOINDEXing a topic that has been indexed for years, it may take a while for Google to reindex (1 to several months). What's worse is that you may end up with a lower rank. You are forcing Google to recrawl/reindex the page. Older topics will get hit the hardest.

With that said, there are some pages you can safely NOINDEX. I would start with Profile pages. They suck up your crawl rate. NOINDEX inactive accounts and maybe accounts that have 10 or less posts. You can already do this with IPS.

If you have RSS generated pages, you may want to consider removing them as well. These are just copied content from external sites. Not useful in terms of Organic Search unless they have lots of comments. Manually review any that have lots of comments.

A great way to do this is to review your Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Organic Search > Landing Page data. Check how much traffic a page has been bringing in the past 7, 30, and 180 days. You may be surprised to find out that some "thin content" pages are actually bringing in traffic. Compare the numbers with other pages on your site.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you are comparing the right numbers. Organic Search is all about USERS not Pageviews.

NOTE: Most sites really don't have an issue with crawl rate.

For sites that migrated to IPS (ie. vbulletin to IPS) the biggest issue occurs with change in URLs. This affects topics, images, and profiles. 

The bigger your site the longer it will take to climb back up.

Many site owners don't realize how much traffic Image Search brings in until it's too late. If I remember correctly, IPS doesn't offer any redirects for attachments/images with migration. They only offer redirects for topics/forums. However, if forum URLs lack forum ids* (which some vbulletin SEO tools offered) than this is something that IPS doesn't offer out of the box. You will need custom code for this.

* domain.com/forum-name/

Before you mass NOINDEXing, I recommend the following...

Check URLs in Analytics that may be affected. DO NOT NOINDEX BLINDLY.

If you NOINDEX 5,000 topics that generated an avg 10 USERS per week. Than you are looking at 50,000 USERS lost for the week.

Let's say your site has an avg 1.5 Pages/Session. That's equivalent to 75,000 pageviews lost for the week.

Have ads on the site? The avg is 3 ad slots per page. That's 225,000 impressions lost for the week. 1 million impressions lost for the month

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by GTServices

[Lucas James]

15 hours ago, GTServices said:

Before you mass NOINDEXing, I recommend the following...

👍

[Durango]

Hi @GTServices

Yes we agree of course with all your general recommandations

As a SEO agency, we also recommend noindexing profiles

To avoid zombies pages and google panda penalty it is a general good move to noindex thin content pages on a website (ex on a board : less than 200 words for instance)

Of course checking analytics is a must do, i recommend SEO tools like Semrush or Moz to learn more about your traffic and rankings

the idea here is to avoid Google penalties that lots of boards have with multiple thin content pages

the question is : for instance 30% of board pages are thin content pages that get 50K users per week, and at first glance you can be afraid to lose that, but the problem is that at the same time those thin content pages harm quality pages (google panda penalty) that could have a much better traffic without those thin content pages indexed, so the good move is : noindex on thin content and work on quality pages

of course at the same time you can work on thin content pages that should be quality pages by adding rich content and so on so that they get indexed

Have a good day

Edited May 28, 2020 by Durango

[Durango]

As some asked me in MP :

How to noindex profiles :

go to ACP > site promotion > Search Engine Optimization > Meta tags > add meta tags

Page adress :    profile/*

Page name : leave empty

Button add : robots with property : noindex,follow

 

THEN

 

wait for 1-3 months approx depending on your board size and then check if you have no profile indexed anymore : site:yoursite.com/profile (you have to wait for google to crawl all profile pages and discover the noindex)

then add in your robots.txt the following directive :

 

Disallow: /forums/profile/

 

[GTServices]

Good advice @Durango but admins need to pay attention to their Sitemap settings as well.

Personally, I prefer not to NOINDEX all profiles. I think SOME member pages should get indexed.

For example, I see that some writers, experts, and staff pages bring in good organic traffic. 

Plus, we are trying to build a "community". Not just a content site.

A community is about it's members. 

[Durango]

Hi again @GTServices

For sitemap cf discussion above, this will update sitemap

55 minutes ago, GTServices said:

A community is about it's members. 

we agree but it doesn't necessarily means that members profiles should be indexed

many large communities don't index profiles and perform very well

as long as members can access members profiles

in some specific cases where profiles pages generate traffic as you mention, then it can be set up as indexed with invision Search Engine Optimization settings

 

[AlexWebsites]

I think Google will automatically noindex thin content. Just check your sitemap in webmaster tools and you'll see all your urls not included. Most, if not all, are due to low content. Personally, I would not worry about setting a noindex tag on forum topics. Maybe profiles...but I think the biggest change anyone can make to grow organic results is making sure their content titles are good and easy to understand.  

Edited May 28, 2020 by AlexWebsites

[opentype]

19 minutes ago, AlexWebsites said:

I think Google will automatically noindex thin content. 

You’re not allowed to say that. What are SEO companies supposed to sell if Google takes care of things itself?

Edited May 28, 2020 by opentype

[GTServices]

20 hours ago, AlexWebsites said:

I think Google will automatically noindex thin content. Just check your sitemap in webmaster tools and you'll see all your urls not included. Most, if not all, are due to low content. Personally, I would not worry about setting a noindex tag on forum topics. Maybe profiles...but I think the biggest change anyone can make to grow organic results is making sure their content titles are good and easy to understand.  

The issue here is that Google will still go to those pages crawl and at some point index. This process takes away from indexing more important pages in a timely manner. (They will continue to revisit the page; Otherwise, comments would be ignored.)

This affects people with lots of pages especially if you just migrated to a new system or rebuild your sitemap. You want to help Google as much as you can. It benefits you the most.

(I removed my previous comment that was here as I believe it will just confuse more than help)

The goal is to get Google to index/rank your quality pages faster asap.

Edited May 29, 2020 by GTServices

[Durango]

Hi

As promised a short feedback on this plugin,

As you know we use this for our communities and communities of clients to which we provide SEO services

Results are excellent, we managed to fix some communities that were suffering from Google Panda related penalties, and traffic is back by focusing Google attention (ie Crawl budget) to rich content topics

we recommend to set 300 words for minimum, but it depends on your industry, it could be more

the more competitive it is, the more you will need to set up as a minimum to index

This plugin is the answer to those who wonder if they should move their community to a subdomain to avoid any collateral damage to their main domain

You can contact me if you need SEO services for your community / site

[AlexWebsites]

Glad its working out! Can you share any metrics that show off these results, in terms of an organic search traffic boost? I'm just not that convinced you need a plugin when looking through analytics on all my sites, when google does a real good job of not indexing thin content. However, I'm always looking for ways to increase organic search traffic if it make sense. 

Trick is...How do you fix thin content and promote the posting of rich content. I do make sure I'm using a block under my topics for similar tagged content and I also use a second plugin to display a similar content block. This all ads relevant content to the page and internal linking to other topics.