Recovering from Google Penguin/algorithm penalty?
-
Anyone think recovery is possible?
My site has been in Google limbo for the past 8 months to around a year or so. Like a lot of sites we had seo work done a while sgo and had tons of links that Google now looks down on.
I worked with an seo company for a few months now and they seem to agree Penguin is the likely culprit, we are on page 8-10 for keywords that we used to be on page 1 for. Our site is informative and has everything in tact.
We deleted whatever links possible and some sites are even hard to find contact information for and some sites want money, I paid a few a couple bucks in hopes maybe it could help the process.
Anyway we now have around 600 something domains on disavow file we out up in March-April, with around 100 or 200 added recently as well. If need be a new site could be an option as well but will wait and see if the site can improve on Google with a refresh.
Anyone think recovery is possible in a situation like this?
Thanks
-
Thanks. I'm hoping the next Penguin refresh shows improvement. The consensus seems to be that to recover from a Penguin penalty is a matter of the refresh happens to see any changes.
-
Yeah, on page seo wise I think we are good. My site blogs regularly about the niche area it's in and news related to it, also try to make it interesting, but yes seo wise I think it passes all the tests too - someone from Google's forums checked it out and thought it looked good seo wise as well as a online marketing company I just worked with that was trying to help my site out of any penalties. They also ran some checks on competitors websites and their online tactics, etc.
Some of the top rankings in our keyword is actually sites like Amazon and Office Depot - which might be a common trend now anyways.
For links the seo company did an analysis and I also added whatever I found that looked like shady directories or anchor text heavy links. I also checked out websites or ranks and if they came on Google's searches when typing their name. Anything questionable I disavowed as it seems now better safe than sorry with backlinks.
-
Thanks for those links. I'm gonna take a look through them. I also thought about being followed by the penalty I guess it makes sense since technically Google may notice a site from the same ip and google accounts being linked between a new and old site, etc. I guess basically if a penalty can be overcome that would be the ideal situation.
-
Hi King,
there is no direct "yes that's normal and easy to fix" as each case is different.
You also do not need to wait for the next run in order to start fixing a site from a penalty. There is a lot of litriture about Moz of recovery from penguin etc. if you do a search.
Not that I put much faith in it but there are also "link detox" software's that can help but be careful with them as its very easy to disavow good links etc. its only an algorithm after all.
Side-note: I thought there might of been a refresh/update end of last week as there was a lot of movement and John Mueller hinted its coming soon in a recent video.
thanks
-
You guys couldn't just give him the direct answer he's looking for?
OP, recovery from Penguin is possible, but you need to wait until the Penguin algorithm is run again. In 2012 and 2013 it was run multiple times, but it has not been run in 2014. It was last run in October 2013. So keep your fingers crossed for a refresh and hope it improves your rankings. If you've done as much as you could to remove links and done a proper disavow file, you should come out looking better.
-
Something to remember with Google and backlinks: changes take time, sometimes months.
Recovery is possible, and I am sorry you are feeling desperate in your situation. The fact is you are doing the right thing by looking into the links of your site and getting rid of any ugly linking domains.
Outside of links, have you compared your seo (on and off page) to the top ranking sites in your industry? A lot of people say that their website is informative and has well done seo, but usually that is because they are so close to their own site to see any errors. (can't see the forest for the trees) Informative doesn't necessarily mean well-optimized.
I would do a competitive analysis along with your link removals. What I would not do is sit back idly by while waiting for Google to put your changes into effect. Be proactive while you wait, and when they do come around and see you have made positive changes in all areas of your site you might get your old ranking back.
Question: what methods did you use to determine what links were bad or harmful?
-
Recovery is always possible. Remember starting a new site is hard and Google have paid it is possible for a penalty to follow you so might as well fix it now. You shouldn't ever have to pay for a link removal if you do just add it to your disavow list no problem.
There are loads of goodl resources on moz take a look through Q&A e.g
http://moz.com/community/q/google-panda-and-penguin-recovery
There are also some great blog posts too e.g
http://moz.com/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
Also a shout out to Marie Haynes (she has some great knowledge on the subject too!)
I know its depressing but keep at it there is a light at the end of the tunnel, one last bit of advice whilst you are removing links don't forget that you also need to replenish the link juice afterwards as you will have a dip so have a strategy ready.
Good luck
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 Service/Product SEO and rankings
Hello, fellow MOZers. We are a web design company, and we had SEO as secondary service for years. Due to changes in the company we started pushing SEO as one of our main services about 6 monhs ago. We have separate page , targeting that service, as well as case studies, supportive information pages, even SEO Center, which is like a blog about SEO only. We are not using black hat SEO, doing honest link earning and building, don't use keyword stuffing, everything is by the book. I understand that SEO takes time, especially for a company which has a footprint as web design company, not as SEO company. We are ranking very good for web design related keyphrases, however, we don't see any improvements for SEO related keywords. It always was and is between 25-30 SERP. At the same time, competitors, who are ranking on first page for SEO related phrases are pretty bad looking. Design-wise as well as blackhat-SEO-wise. Everything is keyword stuffed, UX is horrible, prices are ridiculous. So, do you guys have any thought/advise on how we can see results / why we are not seeing results. Links: Google search result: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=seo%20houston Competitors: www.seohouston.com, www.graphicsbycindy.com Our pages: https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston.php, https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seomozinator0 -
LOCAL SEO / Ranking for the difficult 'service areas' outside of the primary location?
It's generally not too hard to rank in Google Places and organically for your primary location. However if you are a service area business looking to rank for neighboring cities or service areas, Google makes this much tougher. Andrew Shotland mentions the obvious and not so obvious options: Service Area pages ranking organically, getting a real/virtual address, boost geo signals, and using zip codes instead of service area circle. But I am wondering if anyone had success with other methods? Maybe you have used geo-tagging in a creative way? This is a hurdle that many local business are struggling with and any experience or thoughts will be much appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vmialik1 -
How to transform an excel file on a txt file to send the Google Dissavow
I have a disallow file made on excel with lots of columns off information. I want to transform to txt file saving it from excel, but the result file seems understandable Can someone helpme on how to transform an excel file on the Google Dissavow file format for the final import
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Penguin Update or URL Error - Rankings Tank
I just redid my site from Godaddy Quick Shopping Cart to Drupal. The site is much cleaner now. I transferred all the content. Now my site dropped from being in the top ten on almost every key word we were targeting to 35+. I "aliased" the urls so that they were the same as the Godaddy site. However when I look at our search results I notice that our URLs have extra wording at the end like this: ?categoryid=1 or some other number. Could this be the reason that our rankings tanked? Previously on the godaddy site the results didnt show this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0 -
Redirecting doesn't rank on google
We are redirecting our artist's official website to copenhagenbeta.dk. We have two artists (Nik & Jay and Burhan G) that top ranks on Google (first on page 1), but one of them (Lukas Graham) doesn't rank at all. We use the same procedure with all artists. http://copenhagenbeta.dk/index.php?option=com_artistdetail&task=biography&type=overview&id=49 Doesn't rank but the old artist page still does. Is it the old page that tricks Google to think that this is the active page for the artist?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Morten_Hjort0 -
Google Penalising Pages?
We run an e-commerce website that has been online since 2004. For some of our older brands we are getting good rankings for the brand category pages and also for their model numbers. For newer brands, the category pages aren't getting rankings and neither are the products - even when we search for specific unique content on that page, Google does not return results containing our pages. The real kicker is that the pages are clearly indexed, as searching for the page itself by URL or restricting the same search using the site: modifier the page appears straight away! Sometimes the home page will appear on page 3 or 4 of the rankings for a keyword even though their is a much more relevant page in Google's index from our site - AND THEY KNOW IT, as once again restricting with the keywords with a site: modifier shows the obviously relevant page first and loads of other pages before say the home page or the page that shows. This leads me to the conclusion that something on certain pages is flagging up Google's algorithms or worse, that there has been manual intervention by somebody. There are literally thousands of products that are affected. We worry about duplicate content, but we have rich product reviews and videos all over these pages that aren't showing anywhere, they look very much singled out. Has anybody experienced a situation like this before and managed to turn it around? Link - removed Try a page in for instance the D&G section and you will find it easily on Google most of the time. Try a page in the Diesel section and you probably won't, applying -removed and you will. Thanks, Scott
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scottlucas0 -
Why Proved Spammers are on 1st Google SERP's Results
This question is related exclusively to few proved spammers who have gained 1st Google search results for specific terms in the Greek market, targeting Greek audience. Why he looks spammer and very suspicious? For instance, the site epipla-sofa.gr, sofa.gr, fasthosting.gr and greekinternetmarketing.com look suspicious regarding their building link activities: 1. suspicious spiky link growth 2. several links from unrelated content (unrelated blog posts forom other markets, paid links, hidden links) 3. excessive amount of suspicious link placements (forum profiles, blog posts, footer and sidebar links) 4. Greek anchor text with the keyword within articles written in foreign languages (total spam) 5. Unnatural anchor text distribution (too many repetitions) So the main question is: Why Google is unable to recognize/trace some of these (or even all) obvious spamming tactics and still these spammy sites as shwon below reside on the 1st Google.gr SERPs. Examples of spam sites according to their link building history: www.greekinternetmarketing.com www.epipla-sofa.gr www.fasthosting.gr www.sofa.gr All their links look very similar. They use probably software to build links, or even hack authority sites and leave hidden links (really dont know how they could do that). Could you please explain or share similar issues? Have you ever found any similar cases in your industry, and how did you tackle it? We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. Regards, George
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Clickwisegr0