Penguine Recovery
-
Our site, www.autodealerchat.com got hit hard by Google's recent Penguin update (also known as the over-optimization update). For our main set of keywords including:
- auto dealer chat
- dealer chat
- car dealer chat
- automotive chat
We lost placement across the board most notably on automotive chat where we were third and are today non-existent. If you look at our site, we were following former best practices and SEOMoz recommendations. If you look at our backlinks, we were playing the white hat game like everyone else. SEOMoz tools indicated that we were tops in terms of Domain Authority, etc. according to the old rules. Everything changed on April 25th.
Going forward, what are some of the things that we can do to regain some of that lost ground?
Thanks in advance for the insights.
-
I did a super-quick review of your backlinks in OSE. What I saw was mainly press releases, with a few links from sites you own, and links from pages full of spam like http://www.alivincent.com/blog/post/2010/04/28/Work-Weeke280a6e280a6-when-the-reality-show-becomes-a-REALITY!.aspx
I also notice that your backlinks are overwhelmingly using your target keywords as anchor text, so you may be suffering for anchor text over-optimization.
My recommendation would be to focus more on higher quality, natural backlinks. Focus on SEO strategies that build your brand and focus on users. You might find http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-big-brands-get-all-the-breaks helpful.
Hope this is helpful.
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
-
New Domain Name or Keep going - Help not Recovering after Penguin
Hi Moz Friends I wonder if you can help me , a while ago we had a Penguin Penalty and lost our Rankings. After Months of work Disavow and Reconsiderations , Google sent me a message in Webmaster Tools to confirm the Penalty had been uplifted. Since then we havent recovered. I have been working with Bloggers to build relevant safe links, each having a DA of between 10-30. We have developed a Mobile Friendly Website and ios and Android Apps. We have improved Site Speed and moved to a Server within the same Country. We add lots of content and believe we have ticked all the boxes for onpage optimisation. However our DA and PA seems to have dropped slightly after Moz update today. We seem to be jumping in the serps, one day page 4 for "fancy dress" the next day nowhere to be found. I'm not sure what to do next. I'm not expecting to jump back to page 1 for the main keywords but some positive movement would be nice, especially as there are Lower DA Website, not mobile friendly or as fast above us in the serps. What I am looking for I guess is any ideas from you and also what you think about this idea A few people have mentioned that we might stand more of a chance using our domain name example.com instead of example.co.uk. example.com has never been used and is totaly clean (no penaltys ect..) Do we use example.com and move the website and content away from example.co.uk ? if so do we use redirects or would that just pass any hold thats on example.co.uk to the .com version Ideas Welcome Thanks Adam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AMG1000 -
11 000 links from 2 blogs + Many bad links = Penguin 2.0\. What is the real cause?
Hello, A website has : 1/ 8000 inbound links from 1 blog and 3000 from another one. They are clean and good blogs, all links are NOT marked as no-follow. 2/ Many bad links from directories that have been unindexed or penalized by Google On the 22nd of May, the website got hurt by Penguin 2.0. The link profile contains many directories and articles. The priority we had so far was unindexing the bad links, however shall we no-follow the blog links as well? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | antoine.brunel0 -
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 -
Are directory listings still appropriate in 2013? Aren't they old-style SEO and Penguin-worthy?
We have been reviewing our off-page SEO strategy for clients and as part of that process, we are looking at a number of superb info-graphics on the subject. I see that some of current ones still list "Directories" as being part of their off-page strategy. Aren't these directories mainly there for link-building purposes and provide Users no real benefit? I don't think I've ever seen a directory that I would use, apart for SEO research. Surely Google's Penguin algorithm would see directories in the same way and give them less value, or even penalise websites that use them to try to boost page rank? If I were to list my websites on directories it wouldn't be to share my lovely content with people that use directories to find great sites, it would be to sneakily build page rank. Am I missing the point? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
Penguin issues
Hello everyone, I run about 10 sites and pretty much every single one got hit by Penguin (the traffic plummeted on 24th April). I have never done reciprocal links (except 1 domain upto 2005 or so), I have never bought links, I have never spammed message boards or anything like that (except 1 different domain got hit by negative SEO by someone else) and I have never employed anyone to do any of the above. The way I have created sites for the last 10 years is to try to make them useful and let the links build naturally which more or less worked until April this year. I've been tearing my hair out ever since. The only thing you can say about all of them (apart from that I own them but I've been careful with whois etc) is that the link profile is 100% natural apart from the 2 provisos above. Since April I've hired people but I'm down $20K but not any better in the rankings. A few of the sites are: short-hairstyles.com was number 1 for short hairstyles and short haircuts for years then Penguin came and its dropped off for both. It had 10000 or so spammy message board links posted by someone as negative seo I have got some removed but google webmaster tools still reports them as there. There are tentative signs of recovery (maybe) but no traffic increase. 1001-hairstyles.com has been there or there abouts for 10 years for the keyword hairstyles and hair styles until April. A site ourlipsaresealed.skyblogs.be has 30000 links to it (there are only 40000 total) with the anchor text haarstijls which is dutch for hairstyles, I don't think its malicious just they set a template and do a new page every day and they also link in the same way to a competitor who wasn't affected. An seo firm have been working on this one for a few months, the traffic increased 50% a couple of weeks ago but bombed the day after to worse than before. Prom-hairstyles.org when the same way as above in April. The only back link oddity is a site polyvore.com links to it about 400 times (out of 1000 or so total) they are using our pictures to sell their prom dresses (with out permission) but mostly deep link. Most of the other sites went in a similar way but have no obvious backlink anomalies. Do I use the link disavowel tool? I am a bit wary of it because if you watch matt cutts video he keeps reiterating that the tool is for people who have used dodgy link practises in the past and want to do a clean up but that isn't me so am I owning up to something I haven't done by using it? Are the search results as strange in everybody's niche? In mine there is some real dross as well as loads of pinterest and other user generated stuff. Sorry to go on for so long and thanks for getting this far. Ian
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jwdl0 -
Penguin destroys 1 of my sites! Any ideas why the other was spared?
I have 2 main sites for my business. One is a creaky homestead site about 4 years old Another is a much more sophisticated wordpress site now almost 2 years old. That site's traffic steadily increased until May of 2011 when it suffereed a 25 to 30% decline probably due to Panda. I did all of the recommended fixes with little effect until about 3 months ago when its traffic started going up again and had almost a complete recovery until last week when my traffic is down about 95%. I strongly suspecct the penguin. Interestingly, my old site has been virtually unaffectted even though bost sites are fairly similar, on both sites I started with a lot of directory links including DMOZ, Yahoo, BOTW, some strong lawyer sites like NOLO.COM, Lawyers.com, and others not so strong but I tried to get the best directories I could find. Then I started getting a lot of natural links but some of these aee pretty junky sites and scraper type sites. I am curious if anyone has any thoughts on why www.uncontesteddivorce-nyc.com was hit so hard while www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com is unscathed. The newer site has, accoring to majestic seo and market samurai, around 35, 000 backlinks, while the older site has around 3500. Thanks, Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | diogenes0 -
Penguin Update Seems To Benefit Wikipedia Etc
I was updating product info on my site which was apparently hammered by Penguin. As I was updating I was "Googling" the products. I noticed that every single product I carry, Wikipedia held the #1 position in search results. Anyone else noticing this? I previously held the number 1 position on 2 of my products but I was knocked down to 60+...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0 -
We seem to have been hit by the penguin update can someone please help?
HiOur website www.wholesaleclearance.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update, I'm not a SEO expert and when I first started my SEO got court up buying blog links, that was about 2 years ago and since them and worked really hard to get good manual links.Does anyone know of a way to dig out any bad links so I can get them removed, any software that will give me a list of any of you guys want to do take a look for me? I'm willing to pay for the work.Kind RegardsKarl.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0