co nt ent champio n.co m http://www.contentchampion.com/how-to-recover-from-panda/

All talk o f SEO asid e , ho w cute is this?

Loz James

How To Recover From Panda With Andy of Make Money Ninja

There’s been a lot written on the subject of how to recover your website f rom the Google panda penalty – butnot many people I’ve seen have actually done it. One man who has is Andy at Make Money Ninja – and in thisrevealing interview he tells us how it ’s done.

I also talked to Andy about what’s currently working in SEO, the content arms race and building your onlinebusiness. Enjoy

1. For readers who don’t know you Andy, could you outline where youblog and what your online business model/philosophy is please?

Sure, I blog at www.makemoneyninja.com. The site is basically my personal blogwhere I talk about SEO and running online content businesses.

My core business model is the same. I run multiple websites in the iGaming industrybased almost purely on SEO as a traf f ic source.

My main business philosophy is around being prolif ic. I honestly believe I am one ofthe hardest working people in the industry and I perf orm a lot better than my competit ion not by knowing

anything unique or amazing, but by working harder on my business than them.

2. Again, for people reading who might not know about Google panda, could you explain a bitof the background on this and how it dif fers from the penguin penalty?

Panda is a Google algorithm that was designed to separate sites with good content and bad content. It ’s beenGoogle’s attempt to weed poor quality and spammy sites f rom the index. It ’s almost purely based around on-page f actors and the user experience visitors get.

Penguin on the other hand is a newer algorithm that was released to target link spam and webmastersmanipulating the core of Google’s algorithm. In short it penalizes webmasters with unnatural link prof iles.

3. Before we get into your panda recovery strategies, could you tell us where you’d got towith your online business before your sites tanked. You were making a six-f igure income Ibelieve?

Yeah I was doing quite well bef ore I suf f ered a bunch of penalties over the last two years, some I recoveredf rom and some I didn’t.

4. What SEO techniques were you deploying to rank your sites pre-panda?

Pre panda everything about SEO was simple. It was just about content and links. Get as much content on yoursite as possible, targeting as many keywords as possible, then get as many links of whatever kind to your site.It was easy to rank, all it took was a litt le bit of hard work.

Now SEO’s have to jump through many more hoops in terms of quality and need to watch out f or Panda,Penguin and other algorithmic f ilters. It really has gotten a lot tougher to stay ranked over the long term.

5. Ok, so we get to the day your sites started to crash when the panda penalty hit – was it agradual process or did they all tank at once?

I would say the process has been gradual. Since Panda was launched I have had multiple sites be penalized byvarious iterations of Panda.

Because I have quite a lot of sites, I will of ten get a couple of them drop with each Google update/data ref resh.At the same time I will of ten have a f ew recover as well. So f or the most part it is a mixed bag with my minisites.

I do however have a couple of authority sites in the niche I target. These are large sites of between 100 and2000 pages and have had a lot of work and investment go in to each one, so when I suf f er a penalty withthese sites it ’s kind of a big deal because each site is earning me over 4-f igures a month.

Thanks fo r yo ur inp ut Darth.

6. Obviously, you wereusing someaggressive SEOstrategies on yourmoney sites, but whatslammed themhardest and why?

I think with most majorupdates, like most people,I see a big f lux in my sitestraf f ic, some doing betterand some doing worse. Nosingle Panda or Penguinupdate has completelywiped me out ordramatically ruined mybusiness.

The thing that makes reallycompetit ive industries likecasino, poker and otheriGaming industriesdif f erent is that that no natural links exist, period.

Well let me rephrase that, it ’s possible to get natural links and PR in some cases. But the actual rewards f ordoing that in these industries will just be dwarf ed and spammers, link buyers and intelligent SEO’s will outrankyou.

I know this sounds a litt le bit cynical, but the tactics like link outreach that are the pillar of white hat SEO don’treally work in this niche as well as others. Af ter all, who wants to link to an online casino review, or a site abouta poker bonus code, quite simply no one does.

But to answer your original question, the main tactics that tanked my sites were:

• Low quality, thin content. • Mass links, f rom bad neighbourhoods with optimized anchor text. • Too manyaf f iliate links onsite.

Essentially in order to rank you need to break the rules in this niche. So it ’s all about breaking the rules in thesmartest and most intelligent way to create a sustainable and prof itable business.

In order to do that I have basically created a strategy that works around creating my massive authority sitesthat are very non aggressive and unlikely to get penalized. And then creating various churn and burn satellitesites with the main aim of ranking f or a f ew individual keywords, not spending too much time on them, and justf ocusing on a good ROI.

7. What exact ly have you done to recover from the panda penalt ies on your site, and how didyou work this out . Has your income returned to what it was before?

On the sites that have been penalized, the ones that I haven’t been able to get back tend to be my small sites.Once these sites are penalized either f or bad links or Panda related f actors, it ’s almost impossible to get themback without making some huge changes and making the site much better. These sites I tend to let die and justleave them like that.

The sites I have recovered have been my large authority sites. The main things I have changed on these sitesto get them ranking again are:

• Increasing content length and helpf ulness. • De-optimize content and target keywords less aggressively. •More images and rich media. • Responsive themes. • Less af f iliate links and adverts.

Personally, I think the easiest way to get a site un-penalized is to look at a selection of sites that will never getpenalized by Google and copy the page f ormatting aspects of these sites, as well as how the content isstructured. This will ult imately lead to you create a site that is 1) f lat out better than it used to be andresonates with humans, and 2) Google will algorithmically reward, or at the very least, not penalize.

I’ve written more detail about this process on my blog here.

8. What’s the best strategy going forward, short-term churn and burn SEO on small money-makers, or long-term ‘white hat ’ brand building on authority sites – what’s your take on this?

Right now I implement both strategies.

Although Google is heading in a direction that is making it harder f or churn and burners to rank, you can nevertell what they are going to do next. Personally I have had several sites that were banished just pop up againranking f irst page in the last f ew months, and when I look at them objectively, I know these sites should notrank, yet they do.

But at the same time, the trend is clear; these sites won’t be around f or the long term, I can almost guaranteethat.

I think what is cool about my own personal strategy though is that these satellite sites are a great way f or meto:

• Test out what is working and not working with aggressive SEO. • Launder links and create good properties tolink back to my less aggressive authority sites.

The second part is key. Let’s say I have XYZ casino authority site, getting natural and good links to that site isactually very hard due to the niche. Sure I can reverse engineer my competitors prof ile and steal their best links,which I do, but at a certain point you are all getting (or purchasing) the same links, so you have no competit iveedge.

At that point, if I create my own network of satellite sites, by pointing aggressive links at them, I create somekind of buf f er between my less aggressive, long-term sites and my aggressive short terms sites. I call thisstrategy “link laundering” and allows me to get the link juice f rom other sites without taking huge risks with myauthority sites.

Personally I f ind this strategy ef f ective, although you have to be very clued in and good at SEO to get awaywith this. I would not endorse this strategy f or a newbie, quite simply because the amount of ef f ort needed tocreate something like this is hard, the money investment is large overall and you have to be very intelligent andnot make quite a f ew easy mistakes.

Bit ag g re ssive b ut yo u g e t the p o int.

Other than this, the only other sustainable strategy I see working is creating huge authority sites, with lots ofgood content and be very non aggressive with links and do everything by the book. If you can create goodsites, this is basically the only way to do things without risking penalization.

Doing churn and burn sites on their own is simply not a good long-term business model. I am sure some peoplecan do it, and I have respect f or anyone who can do it as a f ull t ime business, I just f ind it very risky, and a hardway to get long-term returns, so I would not recommend that.

9. What SEO andlink buildingstrategies doyou see workinggoing into 2014– are socialmedia signalsand otherfactors nowgaining moreimportance?

Right now I think wehave a contentarms race. Creatinglarge sites that aref requently updatedwith content thealgorithm thinks isgood is important.

When it comes tolink building a lot ofthe low quality linkmethods are becoming more and more inef f ective. At a certain point in the next f ew years, almost allautomated tools will become more and more inef f ective to the point where it ’s not worth spending your t imeusing them.

For example, take a tool like SE Nuke, a couple of years ago it was quite easy to rank a site purely with thattool, now it ’s possible (not out of the box) but the ef f ectiveness in general is going down as time goes on. Soover the next couple of years I am almost posit ive we will see diminishing returns with automated tools.

Right now high PR/PA authority links are still working. The core of the algorithm hasn’t changed all that much.Links still matter; it ’s just the right type of links that are important.

Private networks, link purchases, press releases, guest posting and all that still work.

As f or social signals, I can’t say that they have had a massive posit ive ef f ect on my sites. I f eel like they arestill much less important than links. I have also f ound them temporary in nature, so the posit ive ef f ects don’tseem to last long, unless you are getting say a constant drip of new signals.

10. What’s your view on producing high quality content – does it really make a dif ferencewrit ing ‘magazine quality’ 3000 word mult i-media posts, or can you st ill rank a thin page withthe right links?

You can rank thin pages even without links if they are sitt ing on a domain that has a lot of authority/trust andis linked well internally.

In general content length is not that important. How users respond to the content is much more important thanits length. I have pages on my main sites ranking with 200 words and some with 2000 words. I just write theappropriate amount to cover a topic well.

I generally try to create sites that are a good user experience and get lots of page views. So to me, the design,structure and setup of the site is actually a lot more important compared to the length of the content.

Generally speaking I try to better my competitors. So let’s say I am writ ing an article on XYZ topic, I will load upthe query in Google, see what they cover, then do the exact same thing but a litt le bit better. This is not reallyan SEO decision (Although it helps) but just because I want my sites to be better than my competitors.

On top of that, doing this practice will almost always lead to good on-page SEO, because you will unwitt inglycreate content that is similar to the content already ranking, which will probably use lots of LSI terms,synonyms, co-occurring terms that the algorithm deems important on-page.

11. What advice would you give someone new to this who wants to start making a full t imeincome building aff iliate sites – can it st ill be done?

Not only can it still be done. Now is a great t ime to get started.

This is f or a couple of reasons, the main ones being:

• A lot of your competit ion is either penalized or has given up. • It ’s a lot harder now (More barriers = morerewards f or the best). • Google seems to be over rewarding f reshness, at least in my industry anyway.

My biggest t ips would be spend an allocated amount of t ime researching things and getting up to speed witheverything SEO related, make a plan and then get to action.

I think the most important thing though is to pick the right niche. A lot of people talk about doing something youare passionate about. For me though, a lot of the things I am passionate about are either ridiculouslycompetit ive or there is very litt le money in them.

Personally I am quite passionate about business, so the topic of my websites is not that important. I def initelygo where the money is. For example, it ’s possible f or someone to make a living in my niche with a website thatgets just 100 visitors a day.

When you attack money niches, which have visitor values of over £1 per visitor, it ’s impossible not to makemoney if you build a site that gets traf f ic.

A lot of the keywords I rank f or charge an Adwords CPC of £10-£20 per click, which when I end up ranking f orthem, you don’t need much traf f ic to do well.

On top of that I would suggest they look f or some kind of industry that has continuity-based revenue. Most ofmy income is based on recurring revenue. The people I sign up to services, keep using them month in monthout and I make money over and over again. If my SEO business was to collapse I would undoubtedly take a big

This is actually te rrifying and wil l ho p e fully ne ve r hap p e n.

hit, but I would have enough recurring income to rebuild bef ore it drops too f ar.

12. I’m fascinated; you’re incredibly hard working at this – that ’s what sets you apart – so howdoes your average working day pan out?

My average working day is pretty simple. For the most part it ’s either creating content or building links. Thecontent side could be anything f rom writ ing product reviews to creating YouTube screencast videos.

The link building side could be purchasing links, researching what my competitors are doing (And copying themobviously), managing my own blog networks/mini sites, or looking through SEO f orums f or new potential linkbuilding sources.

I try to keep a to-do list, which I update as I go along and I add new items at the end of each day.

Honestly, it ’s not very glamorous and it ’s a lot of hard work, but like anything worthwhile in lif e, creating a largesemi passive income is not an easy task.

I try to keep distractions to a minimum (Of ten f ailing, but nobody’s perf ect).

I also have a couple of mentors who run some of the largest sites in the industry (Much bigger than mine)which I have bef riended and talk to on a regular basis. I heard a while ago, “you of ten have the average incomeof the 5 f riends you hang around most”, or something similar to that. Once I heard that, I decided to try andspend as much of my time as possible around other rich and successf ul people.

13.

Are the days of the ‘lit t le guy’ making a fortune online effect ively over, do we need to investa lot of money in building our online empire after these Google changes – i.e., is it now out ofmost people’s reach?

Tough to say. I think it ’s always possible to be successf ul if you are willing to put in the ef f ort. I think theproblem with most of the ‘lit t le guys’ if I am being honest is that they are not willing to put in the work to buildsomething truly awesome. There is a reason why get rich quick scams exist. Humans are inherently lazy andjust want an easy solution to tough problems. One thing that really resonates with me is that in order to live alif e other people can’t live, you have to be willing to do things people are not willing to do.

I think generally speaking with SEO, a lot of people incorrectly assume Google is targeting the litt le guys. Theyare just making changes that are closing up loopholes that made it easy to rank. Consequently most of thepeople taking shortcuts, using loopholes tended to be these litt le guys who got penalized. Conversely most ofthe litt le guys tended to have the lowest quality sites.

I think as long as people are using Google to search f or stuf f , there will always be money to be made. It mighttake more hard work and investment now to claim your sport permanently in the top 10 f or all the keywords inyour niche, but I see that as a good thing long term f or people willing to invest in their business. In short, higherbarriers to entry are good f or anyone who is willing to invest and do more than anyone else.

14. Who are your favourite SEO experts and why do you continue to take their advice?

Not sure if I have any f avourite experts. I try to keep updated with the SEO industry, but in all honesty, not thatmuch new happens and there are very f ew people coming out publicly with new knowledge and secrets.

I tend to not take advice f rom people with vested interests in any f orm of SEO. So f or example, listening toSEO advice f rom Matt Cutts is like asking a girl’s f ather how to get in his daughters pants. Sure he can saysome helpf ul things, but as an SEO you need to realise his interest is in helping Google and not you. The samething goes f or people who sell certain SEO services.

I think the best thing someone new to SEO can do to get better is spend a certain period of t ime taking thingsin, f rom both sides of the black hat/white hat spectrum and then spend some time in the trenches testing outideas, theories and methods f or yourself and adapting as you go on. Personally I am quite an analytical personand love testing out new things, which is why I enjoy SEO so much.

Also spying on your competit ion and what they are doing is incredibly important. I am a huge f an of modelling inevery f orm f or any skill whatsoever. So let’s say you want to get the biggest site in your industry. Start doingexactly what they are doing (within your budget) and try and emulate them. The same goes f or any skillbusiness related or marketing related. See what the best do, and then copy them.

Thanks for your time Andy – great interview. If you’ve got any questions on this folks, I can answer them in thecomments section below.

Panda image credit Co nt ent arms race image credit Dart h Vader image credit Flying mo ney image credit