Your 100% original content, user friendly, spam-free, best site in the niche, web site was hit by the Google Farmer update and now you do not know what to do. You are upset, your business is failing and you have no where to turn to make changes. What do you do?

Ben Pfeiffer had some nice suggestions over the weekend with his How to Regain Your Rankings After the Farmer Update and soon after, Vanessa Fox posted her Your Site’s Traffic Has Plummeted Since Google’s Farmer/Panda Update. Now What?

Since Ben published his recap here, I’d figure I summarize Vanessa’s post.

Vanessa starts off by explaining what won’t help your rankings:

Ask Google, “Why Me?”
Demand to Speak To Google
Tell Google They Are Wrong
Tell Google How to Change Their Algorithms

What may help according to Vanessa? She goes through how you should diagnosis the issue and fix it:

Check Your Analytics Data To Ensure You’re Investigating the Right Problem
Pinpoint The Query Categories and Pages In Decline
Make a Prioritized Plan
File A Reconsideration Request
etc.

You really need to read Vanessa’s post in detail, because it is almost impossible to sum up.

But once you figure out what areas of your site might be confused as non-original, low quality content – then you need to figure out how to make it more original or how to block it from Google. I know it is not that simple and it will take time but there are many people in the same boat – if that helps.

For more stories on these updates, see the links below:

How to Regain Your Rankings After the Farmer Update
SEOs Chew On Wired’s Interview With Cutts & Singhal On Farmer Update
What’s Your Name? Farmer Or Panda?
Was Google Too Hasty with the Farmer Update? SEO’s Discuss Good & Bad
Google Accidentally Label Your Site As A Content Farm? Get Help Here
Shocking: Google To Tweak Content Farm Algorithm
Poll: Were You Impacted By The Google Farmer Update?
Google Farmer Update Support Groups
Google’s Farmer Update Live: 12% Of Google’s Results Forever Changed
Google Warns Of “Big Changes Here Very Shortly”
Correction: Google’s Scraper Algorithm Now Live, Not Content Farms
Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Harm You? Categorize Your Site To Fix It.
Confirmed: Google’s Content Farm Algorithm Live! Sites Are Dropping!
Google’s Next Target: Content Farms & On Page Spam

Forum discussion at Sphinn.