Penguin concerns
-
I recently joined a retail company who have been using an SEO agency for a few years. Having done a bit of link profile analysis i'm more than a little concerned that we're a sitting duck for the dreaded penguin.
My main question is should i focus more on the number of actual links pointing at a page or the number of linking root domains? For example one of our pages has over 18000 links pointing at it but from only 39 root domains (immediate alarm bells!!). Most of the links are exact anchor text fro one particular term.
So far we haven't been hit but i'm not naive to think we're out of the woods yet.
-
The sites have decent DA and PA but most of the links in question are in blogrolls and sidebars rather than relevant bodies of content. You or I would pick them straight away as paid links so I don't think it would take Google long to come to the same conclusion.
-
Thanks for your response.
I've pretty much done exactly what you suggested already. I've managed expectations from the day I joined the company.
I don't particularly blame the SEO agency because i've done the same sort of link building myself during my time in agencies.
-
I recently joined a retail company... So far we haven't been hit but i'm not naive to think we're out of the woods yet.
hmmm..... If I was a new guy and had this situation... I would think about writing a very clear one-page memo to my bosses explaining... "what is penguin".... Show examples of your spammy links... explain what might happen to your rankings... and say what % of your traffic comes from google... and how that might hit revenue.
I would include a couple links to easy-to-understand articles about penguin by well known SEOs.
You don't want to be blamed for a disaster that occurs this summer that was caused by somebody else.
I would not bad-mouth the last SEO or the methods... lots of people did this stuff and continue to do it... just explain the risk and how to reduce it.
-
It depends. If the sites linking to you are strong in their own ranks you might not be hit. If they're weak, it seems a lot more likely that Penguin might devalue them or issue penalties.
It also depends on the links themselves. Are these sitewide links in, say, a sidebar or footer? I am beginning to think that Penguin might be seeing them as paid links but I can't say that for sure yet.
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
-
How is your site holding up post Penguin 4.0 roll out?
Hi team I was reading an article this morning from Barry Schwartz at SERoundtable about the impact of Penguin 4.0 and how webmasters are reporting minimal effects since launch. There was another article posted this morning about how the roll out may have began before the launch date, which would make sense as MozCast was reporting high temperatures leading up to Friday, specifically 9/12 to 9/15. I was wondering how everyone's traffic / rankings are performing after news broke on Friday, 9/23? Were you see fluctuations before that? What are you focusing on most now that Penguin 4.0 has launched? I understand we are a few days in and this is a real time / ongoing rollout, but I would be interested to hear what everyone has been seeing so far, if anything! Hope you all are doing well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you! Good luck!
Algorithm Updates | | PatrickDelehanty
P0 -
Penguin Refresh - any ideas when?
Has anyone heard when a Penguin algo refresh might be happening? I used LinkRisk and identified about 1,000 toxic links (not put up by me) and disavowed them. Then my rankings tanked a bit. (yes, I know they must have been helping me.) But I think we are probably under a Penguin algo penalty since 2012. Earned some good links, and disavowed some bad links. So I'm hopeful that a Penguin algo update will give us a traffic boost.
Algorithm Updates | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Do panda/penguin algorithm updates hit websites or just webpages ?
If I have a website that been affected by the panda/penguin update, do bad links affect the entire site or just the page the bad link(s) are linked to? If it is the latter and penguin/panda actually affect webpages, not websites (as is the common reference/conception), then wouldn't simply creating a new URL, targeting this new URL, shifting meta-tags and restarting link-building efforts again (this time using the right quality strategies) be a really common-sense approach instead of the tediousness of the disavow approach that so many go down?
Algorithm Updates | | Gavo0 -
Panda, Negative SEO and now Penguin - help needed
Hi,
Algorithm Updates | | mlm12
We are small business owners who've been running a website for 5 years that provides our income. We've done very little backlinking ourselves, and never did paid directories or anything like that - usually just occasional forum or blog responses. A few articles here and there with some of our keyword phrases for internal pages. Of course I admit we've done some kwp backlinks on some blogs, but our anchor text profile is largely brand names and our domain name and non keywords (excepting for some "bad" backlinks). Our DA is 34, PA 45 for our home page. We were doing great until last Sept 27 when we got hit by Panda and have been working on deoptimizing our site for keywords, we made a new site in Wordpress for good architecture and ease of use for our customers, and we're deleting/repurposing low quality pages and making our content more robust. We haven't yet recovered from this and now it appears we got hit May 22 for Penguin...ARGH! I recently discovered (hard to have time to devote to everything with just two of us) that others can "negative seo" a site now and I feel this has happened based upon results below... I signed up for linkdetox.com yesterday and it gives a grim picture of our backlinks (says we are in "deadly risk" territory). We have 83 "toxic" links and 600 some "suspicious" links (many are in malware/malicious listed sites, many are .pl domains from Poland, others are I believe foreign domains, or domains that are a bunch or letters that make no sense, or spammy sounding emd domains), - this makes up 80% of our links. As this is our only business, our income is now 1/3 of what it has been, even with PPC ads going as we've been hit hard by all of this and are wondering if we can survive fixing this. We do have an SEO firm minimally helping us along with guidance on recovering, but with income so low, we are doing the work ourselves and can't afford much. Needless to say, we are quite distressed and from reading around, not sure if we'll be able to recover and that is deeply saddening, especially from Negative SEO. We want to make sure we are on the right path for recovery if possible, hence my questions. We haven't been in contact with Google for reconsideration, again, no penalty messages from them. First of all, if we don't have a manual penalty, would you still contact all the toxic/malicious/possible porn looking sites and ask for a link removal, wait, ask for link removal, wait then disavow? Or just go straight to Google disavow? For backlinks coming from sites that are "gone" (like a message saying the account has been suspended), or there is no website there anymore, do I try and contact them too? Or go direct to disavow? Or do nothing? For the sites flagged as malicious (by linkdetox, my browser, or by Google), I don't want to try and open them on my browser to see if this site is legitimate. If linkdetox doesn't have the contact info for these - what are we supposed to do? For "suspicious" foreign sites that I can't read the webpage -would you still disavow them (I've seen many here say links from foreign sites should be disavowed). How do you keep up with all this is someone is negative SEOing you? We're really frustrated that Google's change has made it possible for competitors to tank your business (arguably though, if we had a stronger backlink profile this may not have hurt, or not as much - not sure). When you are small biz owners and can't hire a group to constantly monitor backlinks, get quality backlinks, content, site optimization, etc - it seems an almost impossible task to do. Are wordpress left nav and footer link anchor text an issue for Penguin? I would think Google would realize these internal links will be repetitive for the same anchor text on Wordpress (I know Matt Cutts said to not use the same anchor text more than once for internal linking -but obviously nav and footer menus will do this). What would you do if this was you? Try and fix it all? Start over with a new domain and 301 it (some say this has been working)? Just start over with a new domain and don't redirect? Thanks for your input and advice. We appreciate it.0 -
After penguin 2.0, 20-25% drop sitewide, no google unatural links message, What could be causing it?
Hi,Since Penguin 2.0 we've taken a 20-25% knock but not recieved an unatural link message from Google. After sending a bunch of removal requests, I decided to submit a disavow file anyway two weeks ago and tried to make sure I rooted out some links that were built way back when our site started and link building best practice was a bit shadier. Analysis of our backlink profile points to about 40-50% links coming from general directories, wondering if perhaps their weight has been adjusted and this is why the drop occured? Having said that we have some high quality links from government sources and highly trusted sites so not too spammy. Can anyone shed some light or offer suggestions? Thanx
Algorithm Updates | | Mulith0 -
Penguin 2.0 - Any signs yet?
I'm waiting, probing and analyzing and haven't seen any signs of a Penguin change. I am seeing some of my head terms bounce around the last couple of days. Mostly bouncing up and then back down again. I'm not sure if these are signs of an algo change starting, and working through Google's servers. Has anyone seen anything yet?
Algorithm Updates | | tdawson090 -
Rankings Gone? Have I been effected by the Panda/Penguin Update(s)?
Our site www.alphameasure.com has been online since 2005 and currently has a page rank of 4. The site has always ranked on page one or two of Google for our primary keywords (Employee Satisfaction Survey, Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Surveys). I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but now our site is nowhere to be found. I'm thinking our ranking dropped somewhere in mid to late January? We did use an SEO company in the spring of 2012 that went on a link building campaign for us. They added about 450 inbound links over a three month period. Other than that - nothing has really change on the site. We're getting ready to release a new version of our software that was being re-written during all of 2012, so the timing of losing our rankings is just awful. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance,
Algorithm Updates | | EngagedMetrics
Josh0 -
Hit hard by Penguin
We've been hit hard by the Penguin update. To start - we have never paid for a link or participated in any link scheme. Never. I'm sure you've heard that - but in this case it's true. Our site - www.annuity.com - has been in existence since 2004. Because of our name, we've always been ranked on page 1 of Google for the search term "annuity". Now we aren't even on page 50. We got the dreaded letter about links, but we've never bought, exchanged, paid, etc. or participated in any link scheme. We have not needed too. We are referenced by sites such as Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Bankrate.com, etc. Our content is original and our own. We've spent years writing it. Because of our sites name - Annuity.com - we get a lot of web spam. Looking at some of our inbound links - companies are linking to us because of our name (keyword - looks like a auto link generation or something like that) or our reputation. Any suggestions or advice on how to get our ranking back without becoming the Web Police? We don't buy, purchase, spam, or need links that are not earned by the quality of our content. I'm at a loss.
Algorithm Updates | | galis421