My website was penalized by the latest google update

[GordonUK]

Hi everyone,

I just want some help with a traffic issue that is affecting my website. After the most recent google update my website lost about 5,0000 visitors per month in traffic. Previous to that it was successfully gaining 2,0000 + new visitors per month.

Does anyone have an idea why my website lost so much traffic due to this recent google update?? I have heard of websites being affected by between 1-4% but never 40%.

The one issue I am aware of that could affect the rankings of keywords on google is that I have about 200-350 issues of duplicate content involving videos on my website. But this is out of 25,000 pages with original content.

Could these 200-350 items of duplicate content be the reasons why my keywords has been downgraded on google and why I have seen such a big drop in my monthly traffic figures of 5,0000 visitors?

And If I fix this issue of duplicate content does that mean I will re-gain the 5,000 visitors per month I had previously lost?

Or are there any other possible reasons why google could downgrade the ranking of keywords after the latest update?

Many thanks

[canadafred]

You likely have an excess of poorly constructed useless content that the search engine downgraded. I'm visualizing that you have web pages smothered with ads and essentially of little value to the Internet. Maybe I'm wrong but consider how important your web pages really are to the world.

[getmused]

Those duplicate contents really can affect your traffic, have you try to use Google search to locate your site by using your keyword? You should remove these contents and replace them with original ones, including the video unless you provided source information fo it.

[Dani]

DaniWeb was hit by the first Panda algorithm update and ended up losing about 60% of our traffic (which we later gained back a few months later). Google has said that the latest version affected about 1-4% of all sites on the Internet, but not that individual sites were only affected by 1-4%. Individual sites are affected anywhere from 20-80%!!

Duplicate content can definitely be a huge issue. There could be other things wrong too. You can ask for a site audit in the Website Reviews forum.

[getmused]

Getting higher page rank will not automatically higher traffic. Removing the duplicate contents is important and should be your top priority right now. Then you can replace them with interesting and useful contents. Also, check your backlinks, are they come from high-quality sites or not.

[seowright]

As per the google update now google giving main focus to website content. If you want to rank your website into google then you must need quality content which is unqiue and try to build backlink from some good quality and high PR web directories, social bookmarking sites, forums etc. All these things will help you to rank better in search engine.

[GordonUK]

Thanks everyone for all your posts and for your advice too.

My SEO company have suggested that I keep the duplicate videos but add a permanent re-direct code to their urls so that they are effectively being re-directed to just one url which we will keep live. I am in the process of doing that now to all the duplicate video content on my website.

I will also look into getting the pages to load quicker as they are graphic intensive and do take a little while longer to load. I have heard that this could be significant too in google`s eyes and can also affect your traffic.

I will carry out these changes and let you know how everything goes ok.

Many thanks.
Gordon