Please help? unique penguin problem with a blogger template
-
**Can any one help? The problem: **There is a free blogger template on this site http://btemplates.com/2012/blogger-template-crystalweb/ that has a anchor text link to our site using the keyword "wholesale" in the footer, that is the main course of our site being hit with a penguin penalty.**The story so far:**On the 24th April our website dropped out of the serps for our main keywords, traffic has been down 90% ever since, we are a small family run business that relies on the inter-net and goggle for our site to work. Goggle organic serps is about 30% of our turnover and have already had no choice to let 3 people go, problem now is we are left with Me, my Dad and Mum, Both my Brothers and nephew and my wife and my brothers wife so unless we can turn this around I can see us going bankrupt.**What I have done so far:**After the 24th I have learnt a lot about S.E.O , and managed to remove 99% of all bad/spammy links and have now come to a dead end. I have been promoting what we do as a company and promoting our blog over the last 4 months and also built a great twitter/facebook following with lots of re-tweets and shares which we have made some good sales from. We have re-designed most parts of our website and managed to up the conversion rate by 300% We have worked on all aspects of our website to make sure we have little/no duplicate content , have worked on ways to speed up the site and fixed most dead links/404 problems.<var id="yiv904548185yui-ie-cursor"></var>**Now onto our main problem:**After a few weeks of removing links I found a blogger page that kept coming up with the same link, after some detective work I found the template was originally designed by http://www.deluxetemplates.com/ after a few emails we found out that someone paid deluxetemplates to add the link to the site, I'm guessing it was a S.E.O. company we used for 2 years, but they did not admit to this and could not help. A guy called Klodian from deluxtemplates was really helpful and helped remove from his site, also he agreed to a cost of $250 to remove all the pictures on his server to force the blogger's to update, this is what the template from deluxtemplates now looks like vozconuncion.blogspot.co.uk .Now this was only helping fix this issue a small bit as a different site called btemplates also used the template and added it to there website as a free download and hosted the template pictures on there servers. I have emailed a few times, I have sent them twitter messages and also added messages to lots of there templates on there site in the hope they can help, I have also contacted the owner directly on his goggle+1 page but no reply. This template is being downloaded once or twice a day, with no way to get hold of the blogger's using it. As a last resort I offered the owner $1000 to help me remove the template but still no luck.Does anyone have any ideas how to resolve? we are willing to pay to resolve this and will do what ever needs to be done.Thank-you for taking the time to read.Karl.
-
No, still not fixed really do not know what to do next.
-
btemplates.com is a pirated site, if you ask me. No wonder you lose the rank. Must be a penguin hit rather than manual penalty. Is the problem fixed ?
-
Yes Marie, you are spot on with everything.
-
OK. I think I see what you are saying.
My first thought when I read this post was that if I was evil, I could have a template designed, put a keyword anchor text in the footer that pointed at my competitor and then spread that template all across the internet.
But let me see if I understand you. Are you saying:
1. That would only work if you had other signs of bad linking in your profile.
2. A reputable website, as soon as they saw referral visits coming from strange footer links would act on this right away. So, if this got to the point where there were hundreds or thousands of these links across the web then the website owner was in some sense "in on the game" and aware of the links and therefore has some sort of responsibility to own up to.
Does that make sense? If so, then this would mean that a website that was otherwise pretty clean really should not be able to be hit with negative SEO.
But if that's the case, doesn't it mean you could easily hit a competitor with negative SEO if they already had some shady stuff going on?
(To the OP, sorry to hijack your thread...I hope it's ok. This is an interesting discussion.)
-
**This sort of gives fuel to the fire for people who are worried about negative SEO. **
I share your desire to want to help Karl, but I disagree with the idea of any negative SEO worries at all.
In Karl's case, as with every other case I have seen, he hired a SEO company which seemed to have engaged in manipulative link building. Karl has taken all the proper steps and is trying to do damage control.
If an otherwise good site (i.e. one which has not engaged in building manipulative links) had a template created which builds manipulative links to the site, it should not draw a penalty. A diligent site owner or SEO would watch the links to their site at least monthly and follow up on any attempts at negative SEO.
-
Wow! What a frustrating problem!
This sort of gives fuel to the fire for people who are worried about negative SEO. It looks like all you'd need to do to take down a website is to put a keyword anchor texted link in the footer of a free template and spread it around the web.
Sorry I don't have anything more to add to what has been suggested. I really hope you get this fixed! It's so unfair!
-
Thanks for the kind words Karl.
Some additional steps you can take:
-
WHOIS information is required to be kept current. You can registered a complaint here: http://wdprs.internic.net/. The domain registrar then attempts to contact the domain owner to update the info. If they cannot, I think a process is initiated to reclaim the domain name. If successful, the site would go offline and solve your problem. The process takes time. The details are outside the scope of my expertise and I only have general knowledge of this process.
-
The site has an active facebook and twitter account. You can post to both their twitter and facebook account sharing your interest to contact them. The site's social activities show daily activity until late June. It appears the site and social accounts have been left unattended for the past 2 months.
-
The site's about page says the owner is Francisco Oliveros (http://btemplates.com/about/). It shows his personal twitter and blog info. I can see you already found his G+ account :). His personal twitter account had activity last week.
I recommend trying these approaches for now.
-
-
Hi, Yes I did try, "number is not reconsided" I phoned 005255516489 is this correct from the UK?
Thanks
Karl.
-
Have you tried the telephone number listed in Whois?
Vicente, Francisco fco.vicente.oc@gmail.com
NA
20 de Noviembre
Mexico, Mexico 12365
Mexico
+52.55516489 -
Hi Discover Africa, I did file a reconsideration request, but got this answer...We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.We have been outreaching and gaining some good links using our brand name and website URL, I have given Interviews to trade blogs etc, but the only way I can assume we will get our website clear of the penguin penalty is to bring down the anchor text link % but with the template giving site wide links to our site everyday its impossible to keep up with it.Does anyone have any direct contact with btemplates?ThanksKarl.
-
I suggest you state your case in a Google Reconsideration request.
Submit all the URL's you removed and detail all the steps you took to fix up the link profile and on page errors.
Once you've done that, don't spend you time worrying. Start outreaching and get some authoritative links back to your website with your brand name. Just keep at it until you start recovering.
Good luck!
-
Hi Ryan, the link points to our home page, www.wholesaleclearance.co.uk I wish I could have 404 'ed the page. Good idea though, any others? apart from moving domain names? Our domain still gets about 2500 unique visits a day, was about 12,000 a day.The penguin penalty seems to affect any keyword phrase using Wholesale, apart from our brand names and URL.By the way Ryan I have been following the questions and answers for the last 4 months and must thank you for every answer you have given, your a very talented S.E.O expert that has already helped me at least 10 times by reading your answers :)Kind RegardsKarl.
-
Hi Karl,
What page does the "wholesale" link point to on your site? Is it possible to change the URL so the link breaks?
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
-
SERPs Help
Hey Mozzers, Please can someone advise? I manage the on-line content for an estate of Gyms in the UK. We had an existing gym location in Birmingham - www.nuffieldhealth.com/gyms/birmingham and 5 months ago we opened a new location in Birmingham - www.nuffieldhealth.com/gyms/birmingham-central. The 2 pages have different in-page content, different H1's, different title tags, different citations in page both have a few back links from different root domains, however the 2nd page (birmingham-central) does not rank in the top 50 results even though our domain is strong that the vast majority of results? Our original page (/gyms/birmingham) also slipped from page 1 in SERPs to the bottom of page 2 when the second Birmingham gym page was deployed?? I am guessing Google does not know which page to serve in SERPs, bud i am at a lose as to how to fix this issue. Can anyone please advise?? Regards Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bendall0 -
Should I Even Bother Trying To Recover This Site After Google Penguin?
Hello all, I would like to get your opinion on whether I should invest time and money to improve a website which was hit by Google Penguin in April 2014. (I know, April 2014 was nearly 2 years ago. However, this site has not been a top priority for us and we have just left until now). The site is www.salmonrecipes.net Basically, we aggregated over 700 salmon recipes from major supermarkets, famous chefs, and others (all with their permission) and made them available on this site. It was a good site at the time but it is showing its age now. For a few years we were occasionally #1 on Google in the US for "salmon recipes", but normally we would be between #2 and #4. We made money from the site almost entirely through Adsense. We never made a huge amount, but it paid our office rent every month, which was handy. We also built up an email database of several thousand followers, but we've not really used this much. (Yet). In the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012 the site attracted just over 500k visits. After the rankings dropped due to Google Penguin, traffic dropped by 77% in the year from 25th April 2011 to 24th April 2012. Rankings and traffic have not recovered at all, and are only getting worse. I am happy to accept that we deserved our rankings to fall during the Google Penguin re-shuffle. I stupidly commissioned an offshore company to build lots of links which, in hindsight, were basically just spam, and totally without any real value. However they assured me it was safe and I trusted them, despite my own nagging reservations. Anyway, I have full details of all the links they created, and therefore I could remove many of these 'relatively' easily. (Of course, removing hundreds of links would take a lot of time). My questions ... 1. How can I evaluate the probability of this site 'recovering' from Google Penguin. I am willing to invest time/money on link removal and new (ethical) SEO work if there is a reasonable chance of regaining a position in the top 5 on Google (US) for "salmon recipes" and various long-tail terms. But I am keen to avoid spending time/money on this if it is unlikely we will recover. How can I figure out my chances? 2. Generally, I accept that this model of site is in decline. Relying on Google to drive traffic to a site, and on Google to produce revenue via its Adsense scheme, is risky and not entirely sensible. Also, Google seems to provide more and more 'answers' itself, rather than sending people to e.g. a website listing recipes. Given this, is it worth investing any money in this at all? 3. Can you recommend anyone who specialises in this kind of recovery work. (As I said, I have a comprehensive list of all the links that were built, etc). OK, that is all for now. I am really looking forward to whatever opinions you may have about this. I'll provide more info if required. Huge thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smaavie
David0 -
Does this look like a Penguin drop to you?
Hi Folks, This is my first post here. Psyched to be part of this great community. I have a site that's seen a steady drop in Google organic traffic since September of last year. Slow at first, then picking up speed in late January, then in a free-fall in May. Things are finally flattening out, but I'm left with 30% of my former traffic. See graph. I've been thinking that this was caused by Penguin. Back in 2006-2009, I used free directory submission services, and it looked like I was finally getting penalized for it. However, from the research I've done so far, it looks like websites hit by Penguin see a decrease in traffic over a couple days, not six months. Should I concern myself with disavowing those spammy directory links, or focus my energy elsewhere? There are other plausible explanations for the decline. I haven't posted much content on the site in recent years, and have let my blog go fallow. Obviously, this needs to be fixed. My question is, in addition to my content development and quality linkbuilding efforts, should I be worried about those spammy links? For the record, this is a high-quality informational site with lots of high-quality links mixed in with the spammy ones. Thanks for any insight you can offer. qozm7Rr.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | srmaximo0 -
Google Reconsideration Requests no problem... So what do I do next?
Hi all, So I recently filed a Google reconsideration request - but it came back saying "No manual spam actions found" - ok, so that's that. But from what I've read, if we have been hit by Panda for duplicate or thin content, we wouldn't know - in other words, Google does not report it as it is an algorhythm penalty as opposed to a manual one. So what are my options - do I wait until the next Panda update? when can that be? Or do I start over on a fresh domain? Input and views appreciated. thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
How can I tell if my site was penalized from the most recent penguin update?
Hey all, I want to be able to see if my website was penalized from the most recent penguin update because we have several hundred websites built and at the bottom of each on it says something along the lines Website by, Web Design by, Hosting by and links back to our homepage. Could this possibly be penalizing us since these links have similar anchor text and on sites that have nothing to do with our services? Thanks, Ryan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Help for a complete SEO newbie!
Hi all, I've just joined seomoz today to try and further my very young education on SEO. My major problem is i need my site to rank high in local search engines but feel that none of the customers read much of the content as i am a landscaper and feel they just search "landscaping in Newcastle" and are immediatly looking for a contact number to arrange a free estimate. I dont do any online sales, its just to generate leads. I've spent alot of time building a better site than my local competitors but they still out rank me on alot of keywords i.e. "Driveways in Gateshead" My question is do i keep adding more and more content hoping this will work long term or do i link build with anchor text etc or both? I cannot believe they still out rank me when i feel i have more links more anchor text and a load more origional content and images. I think it may be that my site is still under 1 year old. I feel i am boucing from content to link building then trying something else without any real knowlegde of what i really should be doing or what should be the priority at this young stage for my site. I have managed to get on page 1 of google for most of my keywords in local searches ( obviously not national) but still feel its been more down to luck and effort than actually knowing what i am doing when it comes to site and offsite optimization Any help, tips etc would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | totaldriveways0 -
Multiple H1 tags are OK according to developer. I have my doubts. Please advise...
Hi, My very well known and widely respected developer is using multiple H1 tags I see - they like using them in their code and they argue multiple H1s conform with HTML5 standards. They are resisting a recode to one H1 tag per page. However, I know this is clearly an issue in Bing, so I don't want to risk it with Google. Any thoughts on whether it's best to avoid multiple H1 tags in Google (any evidence and reasoning would be great - I can then put that to my developer...) Many thanks for your help, Luke
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Do backlinks with good anchor text from bad sites help?
Hi, In the Netherlands, the SEO competition for terms like loans is very competitive. I see a website in this industry that seems to be doing very well based on links with good anchor text from sites that seem quite worthless to me, such as: http://www.online-colleges-helper.com/ and http://www.alohapath.com/ My question is: is it worth pursuing this type of links? I assume these must be paid links, or am I wrong? I'd really rather not go down this route but I don't want to be outranked by someone who is using these types of links... Many thanks in advance for any type of insight! Annemieke
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnnemiekevH0