Have I been Hit by a Penguin? No Warning in Webmaster / Some Pages still Rank
-
Hi all,
I have recently signed up to MOZ as I have seen a large drop in the turnover of a site I work with as well as a slump in visitors.
I know part of this slump is the transition from google product search from being free to paid and chewing through our adwords budget quicker.
The other part though seems a little more tricky, I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for.
As you can see in the attachment webmaster tools is showing much decreased visibility, and MOZ agrees with this. Key terms that have lost rank have done so by around 4-10 positions.
The content on the site has all been hand written by myself, however some of the pages are a little "stale" so I am currently running through re-writing every product page on the site (1000 products or so) all my product pages grade a minimum B with 99% A on the Moz page grader.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that fresh content should assist in getting google interested again?
However my real questions is, Is this Penguin? or is this just stale content?
-
Thanks for the detailed response, It is very much appreciated.
-
Hello speedingorange,
You wrote: "I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. "
I think you have it backwards. The Panda update, which is NOT algorithmic, is the one that would that would "see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools". The Penguin update, which IS algorithmic, is the one that would cause "site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for". And a Penguin penalty does not result in a Google Webmaster Tools notification. (That is my understanding. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mixed up, And I am OK with being corrected.)
Two of my sites are suffering from what I believe is Penguin damage. For both the damage is a lot of rank lost for only a few keyword phrases. Other phrases continue to rank normally. When I did a bunch of keyword research (using Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic results blended together) I found that the few keyword phrases that I severely lost rank for had both:
- a high percentage of Follow links using exactly those phrases as anchor text, and
- links from sources that didn't really pertain to the anchor text or to our website.
My understanding is that these are the type of things that Penguin will bite you for. So we did remove or change a few of the anchor text links, and did a Google Disavow on most of the remaining links. We did leave a few anchor text links that were from good pertinent sites. This was done in early June, and we still have not seen any results. I have read that we will not see any big results from submitting a Disavow file until Google updates Penguin again. So we are keeping our fingers crossed until then.
Couple of quick things to explore if you are going to try a similar rescue. First, we did not pay any attention to our NoFollow links since they supposedly do not effect rankings. Second, we did create a nice file of follow links from all our link research, and used it as an additional submission with the Link Detox tool (the spreadsheet report from that tool is very valuable when checking for overoptimized anchor text). Third, we disavowed entire domains rather than individual links because we heard that was most effective.
Good luck!
-
I will give it a read.
Many THanks
James
-
It's not stale content. As the dates in the graph appear to correspond to Penguin 2.0, I'd be thinking along those lines.
Google algorithm change history: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
-
I really recommend you to read this Case Study. It's quite long, but it will help you to understand how to use this and some other tools to find out if you where a Penguin's Victim.
http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/elearners-penguin-2-0-penalty-analysis/
-
Thanks Romeo,
I will be sure to check this out ASAP.
-
Hello speedingorange,
You can use this tool to find out if you have any Toxic inbound links. https://www.linkresearchtools.com/members/signup.php?product=linkdetox
Once you've discovered it, you can ask to Disavow them from your Google Webmaster Tools account and wait a couple of weeks to have them removed.
Good luck,
Romeo.
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
-
Huge ranking flux that we cannot explain
Hello, SEO experts from around the world. We need your help; we have seen massive ranking flux across our website and others. We cannot explain what is causing this ranking flux. The content marketing is top quality, so we don’t know why we are moving from 25 to 50th on Google and sometimes even beyond that. Can any SEO experts explain why our agency is moving so much within Google’s rankings? We don’t know whether to make changes or possibly wait. Any help would be fantastic; thank you all.
Algorithm Updates | | sarahwalsh0 -
Increase of non-relevant back-links drop page ranking?
Hi community, Let's say there is a page with 50 back-links where 40 are non-relevant back-links and only 10 are relevant in-terms of content around the link, etc....Will these non-relevant back-links impact the ranking of the page by diluting the back-link profile? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Nofolow links drive to losing ranking
Hello there,
Algorithm Updates | | Goran024
I am an owner of mobilnishop website. We selling mobile phones. As you know , new phones coming every few days and they starting to be old after 1-2 years. So I decided to all pages which present old (discontinued) phones make them "noindex". I this way I meant to to focus google on new pages ( for new phones). After 1 year I find a huge losing trafic and key word position on goole. For example, word :
"mobilni telefoni " from 2 place I move to 11. So what I find out is that I LOST LINK JUICE. Is it possible that google does not see given link of my noindex pages? It look that I made auto goal.
Any opinion? Suggest ?0 -
How soon before author rank becomes a major ranking factor?
Hi, I wanted to pose a question How soon do guys think itll be before author rank becomes a one of Googles major ranking factors? From what I can see the way they have designed it signals that it is only matter of time, before they start using it as a major ranking factor... And I have a question on Author ranks impact on the ability to sell a blog/site in the future. Surely if the blog is tied to an author(s) and the ranking of the site in the search engine is somewhat based on this authors author rank who is a part of the site/blog, then it becomes harder to sell the property if the author is not going to be a part of the property after the sale?. I look forward to your responses on this,
Algorithm Updates | | sanj50501 -
Website dropping from Page 1 pos 5 to no ranking and then back again?
Hi all, We have a very odd occurrence with a client of ours. It should be noted that they had a penalty recently removed about 2 months ago after much work from our company. Recently they started appearing back on Page 1 Google for a semi competitive keyword term. We were very happy with this and so was the client. The the ranking improved with our work to position 5, which was excellent. Unfortunately what has been happening is they have been dropping out of the rankings completely for this semi competitive keyword for a few days and then reappearing in the same position. The client is checking daily and has noticed. I thought this is just a 'hangover' from the Google penalty and perhaps a one off occurrence, but it has happened about 3 or 4 times now and seems to be happening every couple of weeks. Can anyone shed some light on this behavior? I have checked Webmasters Tools and everything is fine. Thanks Jon
Algorithm Updates | | Jon_bangonline0 -
Are links from directories still good practice?
Ok, so I am new at "link building"....which of course I have read furiously on how that philosophy is changed, it's a goal, not so much a process. I am focusing on great content, social sharing, etc. BUT, I see competitors still getting links from some of the directories that I have found listed on Moz as being "good" directories to list in. For example, yelllow pages, manta, ibegin, hot frog, etc. Do I have the terminology totally twisted here? Is it still good practice to get a couple links from these directories. Or is this practice completely the wrong thing to do post Panda & Penquin. Thanks guys!
Algorithm Updates | | cschwartzel0 -
Server Down for Few Hours went from Page 1 to Page 6?
We were on Page 1 - our server went down for about 4-6 hours and then we dropped to page 6. Would the server being down for this amount of time affect our position? Any advice would be much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | webdesigncwd0 -
Did the Bing/Yahoo deal change?
I just went to my campaign to check on rankings, and my Bing rankings are wildly different from my Yahoo rankings. None of the keywords are even close, every one is very different. Anyone know what is happening here? Shouldn't they still be the same?
Algorithm Updates | | DanDeceuster0