Manual Action imposed by Google

[Wild Reels]

Hello everyone, this isn't the first post I wanted to make, I've had an account for some time and I generally tend to spend most time reading up on the SEO sections.

My site http://wild-reels.com was issued with a manual action from Google on Nov 20th, and as you would expect the site has tanked overnight, so I'm looking for some suggestions as to what the key issues are, or solutions from others in this industry that have had the same or similar problems.

I've only been running the site in my free time over the past year and a few months (previous to this i was just a player of slots), and it was really starting to pick up in visits/sign ups so obviously getting this message from Google was a huge kick in the balls

I've copied the full message sent from google into the webmaster tools inbox, so that you can read exactly was has been said below,

Google has detected thin content on your site that provides little or no added value. This critical issue results in irrelevant or low-value search results for Google Search users and can negatively impact your site’s ranking. Therefore, Google has applied a manual spam action to wild-reels.com/. In order to remove the manual action on your site, you must significantly change the content to conform to our guidelines and submit a reconsideration request. After we determine that you have complied with our guidelines, we will remove this manual action.

Fix this problem now:

Revise any duplicate or thin content on your site
Look for any content on your site that might have been scraped directly from another source or provides little value. Create revised content that is original and relevant to your site.

Submit a reconsideration request
Remember: we reject reconsideration requests consisting of empty or blank sites. Include any details or documentation about what content you have changed.

I've already started internalising lots of the front page, and remove several generic 125x125 banner, as well as starting to write content that isn't purely focused on getting people to sign up at a casino, but your input would be appreciated.

 

[slotplayer]

There is not enough content above the fold.

 

[eenzoo]

Jepp ... a "Thin Affiliate", less content above the fold wouldn´t be the problem. But the post a pretty short, pretty thin and the half is dublictated because u will find that "bonus rules" or "free spin" news etc. at 100k other sites.
There is no relevant content around. Add some reviews. 20 -30 with a minimum of 1500 words each to build. How to´s, Strategy and advice articles. Maybe if you have a nice basement of quality content, u can "risk" to post that kind of thin news.

 

[WCD Admin]

personally I think that's messed up. nothing wrong with the site. what about this site makes them do a manual intervention? i googled a review, and no similar content showed up. indeed the site has been penalized, but unlike the above posters, i cannot see anything that justifies a manual penalty.

if they can detect that its thin content, then why don't they just rank it lower? this doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[slotplayer]

I think its an above the fold content problem.

Prioritize visible content
Your page requires additional network round trips to render the above-the-fold content. For best performance, reduce the amount of HTML needed to render above-the-fold content.
The entire HTML response was not sufficient to render the above-the-fold content. This usually indicates that additional resources, loaded after HTML parsing, were required to render above-the-fold content. Prioritize visible content that is needed for rendering above-the-fold by including it directly in the HTML response.

• Only about 50% of the final above-the-fold content could be rendered with the full HTML response

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http://wild-reels.com/

 

[WCD Admin]

You may be right. I just fail to see how/why a manual penalty was applied - if the algorithm picks it up and determines it to be negative, why don't they rely on that? If its indeed manual, they must have some seriously bored individuals working there! Plenty of poorly created websites with great content (in fact a lot of the best content is created by people who are not developers!) anyway my 2 cents... have a good Thanksgiving everyone

 

[LandofOz]

Thin content? The home page has over 1600+ words, and most of the internal pages have 100s of words per page. I don't understand why it is thin content, and why a manual penalty was applied to the site.

 

[slotplayer]

hard to say with Google. nice site though, its really too bad.

 

[AussieDave]

hard to say with Google. nice site though, its really too bad.

Agreed - my guess it's the above fold issue too. Granted some sites have an identical format and G leaves them alone. But that's neither here nor there cause the OP has been penalised and needs to fix the problem. I'm not sure how these manual infractions go...

It would seem highly unlikely a member of the G team would personally verify/veto each penalised site.

Here's a suggestion to fix the issue without going to too much trouble.
But I must stress... I don't know if the site will be manually verfied by G. If that's the case, this will fail.

Solution re-order the content... Visually it stays the same but under the hood, you re-code the positions on the content.

EG - The coding for "Online Casino Slots News" is position above "New Online Casino Reviews". Reiterating, visually the home page doesn't change. Just that the coding for the 2 aforementioned sections change/swap positions.

I'd give a better analysis but the source code is minified etc etc to such an extent, trying to view it & offer more suggestions is painfully hard.

Edit:
I'd also consider changing your menu links around.
wild-reels.com/casino-bonuses/ is the following nav menu item proceeding the home page. IMO it's light on unique and helpful content. Way too many bonuses clumped together. Do you have reviews for the casinos? Then add links back to these bonus offers.

Also - in-site (internal) pages are opening in new windows, try to eliminate that I only use new windows to action a casino visit for the punter.

I'd break up the bonus offers, into max 10 listings. In-between these add some unique content. IDK target specific content within the bonuses niche. Maybe a 101 bonus guide or something... Be creative and engage G's philosophy. Granted it sucks but it avoids penalties like you have now.

The site has some really great content BUT imo it needs focus applied to it. The top menu item links are thin/average in the way of unique content. Put your beefy content (add these to your top menu).

I think it's simply a case of making your unique content shine and your generic content take 2'nd spot as apposed to what's going on now. If punters like your site, like your content etc, they'll visit the casinos you recommend

 

[Wild Reels]

thanks for the suggestions so far, the internal links need to be fixed (thanks for reminding ne , that was my previous external links pointing to /visit/casino that have been made internal now, previously it was a choice of more info / get offer with 2 links.

Lots have people have suggested above fold content, so it's probably something I'll play around with, i just need to re-do all the images in the sliders though as it is hard coded to 250 pixels to show a bit more blog text, the re-arranging on the content is an easy fix though/ on looking i could maybe even add those to the sidebar anyway.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, and critique much appreciated.

 

[PaaskeUK]

There is not enough content above the fold.

What I exactly said in other thread. It is a great site no doubt about it and lot of great and amazing content. But I think its the main page that made it happen. Despite I still do not understand why your site got hit still.

Oh and by the way GREAT post from Bet4You. Really great suggestions you give to members here all the time. I could really use a helping hand sorry for being cheeky. And I don't want to hijack this thread but when you get a minute Bet4You could you maybe have a look at my site www.bonuswonderland.com as I seem to really have messed that site up with everything as I am to be honest really bad with SEO and how all technical stuff needs to be PS yes please if can send in PM also to anyone else who have suggestions

 

[Frank]

When running a few searches of text.. it appears on 3-4 different pages.. that might be your problem, it does say duplicate or thin content, I would deindex your categories

 

[Wild Reels]

well i definitely do no want to count my chickens, but I have just checked some of the highest ranking keyword I had and they appear to be back in place, and also just the term "wild reels" now puts the site at number 1, with the manual action in place it was demoted to page 6 (my facebook page came top...).

I have not received any notice from google yet though, hence I am not 100% celebrating yet. But I did put a few of the suggestions in place, i didn't want to do everything in 1 go as it wouldn't have been so obvious to me what caused the manual action.

But I removed categories from the sitemap today, and previously has made all the large images on main page point to internal link content instead of extranl striaght to the offer, as well as writing a 6,500 word article on High Variance slots which nearly killed me .

Fingers crossed, as i had a lot of shit on my plate with my dad in hospital with cancer , and site seemingly ruined by google at the same time, so I was just expecting the 3rd thing to finish me off

 

[slotplayer]

When it rains it pours, sorry about your dad.

 

[Wild Reels]

Got the official email today for google, looking through the data in webmaster tools would suggest that Frank was correct, on Nov 19th for some reason, and I've a funny feeling I updated the yoast plugin that day, Google tried to index over 2700 pages, which is about triple the actual content.

Whether any settings were changed I'll never know, I haven't really changed anything sitemap wise for months.

I removed the categories, resubmitted the sitemap and within a few hours the results were back to normal.

I don't think any of the Manual action was manual though..

 

[PaaskeUK]

well i definitely do no want to count my chickens, but I have just checked some of the highest ranking keyword I had and they appear to be back in place, and also just the term "wild reels" now puts the site at number 1, with the manual action in place it was demoted to page 6 (my facebook page came top...).

I have not received any notice from google yet though, hence I am not 100% celebrating yet. But I did put a few of the suggestions in place, i didn't want to do everything in 1 go as it wouldn't have been so obvious to me what caused the manual action.

But I removed categories from the sitemap today, and previously has made all the large images on main page point to internal link content instead of extranl striaght to the offer, as well as writing a 6,500 word article on High Variance slots which nearly killed me .

Fingers crossed, as i had a lot of shit on my plate with my dad in hospital with cancer , and site seemingly ruined by google at the same time, so I was just expecting the 3rd thing to finish me off

Sorry to hear about your dad. Hope he gets recovery and picks up his strengths again. Wish you all the best and great work on your site as well.

 

[Kadabra]

Glad it was solved.

I don't think any of the Manual action was manual though..

I think most of them are not manual. I had a "manual" action on few pages as well that affected the whole site. The message was that the site seems to be hacked. On GW someone told me that maybe the word casino appears too much or something like that. I submitted reconsideration request saying that the site is about online casinos and it was solved within few days.

It's stupid, but on the other hand, I actually prefer that they at least mention it as an action and let you know about it. Otherwise, you would never guess what the issue is.

Hope your dad gets better.

 

[Wild Reels]

Yep it's nice to be informed, but I would like the email to be just a little more descriptive as to the nature of the problem, as,the advise received was quite varied, and if you don't get fortunate in altering the correct things you can end up tinkering with your site indefinitely trying to sort it.

It has spurred me on to add more content though too, so in that respect it's a positive.

And the old man is doing a lot better in hospital and should hopefully escape next week.

Thanks for all the replies