Time for a new domain post-Penguin?
-
Hi there,
Quick overview of a client who came to us after having the vast majority of their link value slashed by Penguin.
- Client only has a limited 'recovery budget'
- Client had been outsourcing SEO to a foreign company
- The website was 'keyword stuffed' when we arrived
- Links were of poor quality, the company clearly majoring on quantity rather than quality.
- Client was ranking #4 or #3 for a keyword which was bringing in sales.
- Post penguin, dropped to page 5 and then out of the top 100 for that keyword, losing 70% of sales.
The client, under our supervision has
- Rewritten spammy content so they work for human beings (so it now reads well)
- Gone through the website and is removing old/duplicate and low-quality content
- De-emphasised other pages for the target keyword so that only one page majors on it.
- After doing the above has submitted a reconsideration request (about 2 weeks ago, so I know there's time).
We are focussing on ensuring her content is written well and on building decent links to the site (i.e. to put some good-uns where the bad ones were).
We're into month 2 of the 'clean-up exercise' and the site is still only ranking #90 for the keyword.
Given the client's budgetary limitation, could it be more beneficial to consider a new brand identity and domain name to start afresh (without a 301 redirect) or should we just continue along the track we are doing with this client?
Thanks!
-
Hey Russ,
Thanks for your reply. I will do my best to answer your questions 'back at me'!
1. I was aware that the reconsideration request may have no impact and as the client doesn't recall receiving a penalty notice, I just got it done to ensure we were covering all basis. And for a couple of minutes used, I thought it would be worth checking.
2. I agree we need to do some link removal. One question on the back of that, and ensuring we do what is needed within the client's limited budget is, if the links/websites are no longer listed in Google (which from the partial data we have from the old company, many are not), does removing them hold any value as the links won't be passing signals of any kind if the site's not in the SERPs any more, right?
3. My only concern with this one is the risk of duplicated content. The client has already re-written the home page and is in the process of re-writing the others because of the previous company's spammy SEO approach. To get them to write another version is going to be too much for them. I'm definitely considering getting them on a fresh domain but don't want to inadvertently cause them more problems!
Thanks for the article, that came out during a time of illness so I completely missed it. Thanks!
-
Hi Martin,
First off, thanks for the great information you provided in your question - saves a lot of time when there is stuff to work with
1. The reconsideration request should have little to no impact if Penguin was the culprit. Penguin is algorithmic and does not require a recon request. Did the client get an unnatural links notice?
2. If it was Penguin, you will need to do some link removals to clean things up. There is a great SEOMoz post on a case study regarding link removals and Penguin here. There are also both services and tools that assist with bad backlink removals.
3. Determining whether to start anew is always difficult. My gut instinct is normally to start a parallel site (maybe the .org version of your existing domain). Go ahead and start working on that site while you clean up the other one. Eventually, you should be able to get out of Penguin's grasp, but there is no reason to put your entire web business on hold until that happens. Of course, you can supplement your traffic with increased adwords budget, or using local and products to your advantage.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domain Name redirection to new Domain Name - VS - Transfering Domaine Name from account 1 to account 2
Hi there! Thanks for your time 😉 I have a new cutsomer that bought his domain name via WIX and your know... WIX sucks huge time for SEO. Basically, we want to do SEO outside of WIX. But I am not sure HOW I should proceed. I think I have 2 options: OPTION 1- We transfer the domain name from WIX to a new hoster. But we will lose 7 days during that, lose prospects while the website is in maintenance and we might lose the little bit of ranking we have on the way. BUT! ONCE Everything is done with the transfer, we will be able to operate our SEO campaing with a Domain Name that as 15 domain authority, links, little bit a ranking, etc. OPTION 2- I just buy a new domain name. I build the new Website on it and then use the SEO juice from the old domain name with redirect to push the new domain name. Like this, I won't lose any opportunities. BUT I will have to restart the SEO as new... Any tips or ideas for me? Maybe there is an OPTION 3 that I don't know about.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gab-SEO1 -
Redirect to new SSL Domain
Hi Experts; How to redirect https://old-domain.com to https://new-domain.com without buying new SSL? I have one GoDaddy SSL and I want to use it for a new domain. Its currently use for old domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cafegardesh0 -
How to avoid Google penalties being inherited when moving on with a new domain?
Looking for SEOs who have experience with resetting projects by migrating on to a new domain to shed either a manual or algorithmic penalty. My questions are: For algorithmic penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? For manual penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? Any other input on these kind of reset projects is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spanish_socapro0 -
New my domain.com/blog option vs. my blog.mydomain.com option
Our e-commerce site has been on Big Commerce for about a year now. One thing many SEO folks had told us is that having a blog located at /blog was going to help more than a subdomain blog. option. BC has never had the option to have a blog hosted on their platform (/blog) until now. I am now wondering, since we have lost traffic in the past and are trying everything we can to regain it, if we should purchase the Wordpress Site Redirect upgrade and move the subdomain blog (blog.) to the new site option /blog. Any help or feedback from you is very much appreciated. I have attached a screenshot of our main website vs. our blog from Open Site Explorer in case it helps anything. I29Tw5P
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh3300 -
Page and Domain Authority
How much Page and Domain Authority we need to look for to secure a backlink.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Moving some content to a new domain - best practices to avoid duplicate content?
Hi We are setting up a new domain to focus on a specific product and want to use some of the content from the original domain on the new site and remove it from the original. The content is appropriate for the new domain and will be irrelevant for the original domain and we want to avoid creating completely new content. There will be a link between the two domains. What is the best practice for this to avoid duplicate content and a potential Panda penalty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Citybase0 -
Stupid Question?? Is [painter new york] the same keyword as [painter in new york]?
Hi, This may be a stupid question but... Google ignores short/common words like 'in', so if I optimize a page for 'painter in new york' will it rank just as well for 'painter new york'? In Google's keyword tool, exact match gives [painter new york] 140 searches per month but [painter in new york] gets < 10. However, it is much more difficult to write 'painter new york' naturally into body copy than it is 'painter in new york'. So what do I do? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StrayCat0 -
Are sub domains considered completely different than the root domain?
We have a project that is going to generate duplicate content. If we move the new content to a sub-domain (E.g. product.domain.com) will it still be considered duplicate content to the root domain? Or is it like having two completely different domains? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tripled5110