Hit hard by Panda 3.3 and Penguin. What to do?
-
Hi there.
I work with a company that was originally all white hat, then began to dabble in some pretty serious black hat activities last year (usually paid linking in private blog networks). At the time we saw tremendous results - many of our most highly competitive keywords shot up 20, 30 positions to the top 10. And they didn't seem to budge so long as we kept those (very expensive) links intact.
Alongside all of this, we have had a lot of white hat activity going on (pretty much everything recommended by Google/SEO Moz is ALSO in effect on this domain - lots of consistent/relevant blogging, social media, good content, good on-site SEO, etc), which I attribute to SOME of our success with keyword ranking, but what really made the difference was the paid linking. Let's just say we had two different mindsets behind the SEO strategy of the company, and the "Get rich quick" one worked for a while. Now, it doesn't. (Can you guess if I'm the white hat or the black hat at the company?)
So here's my question. I have made the effort to contact all of the webmasters of our egregious links and, as everyone else has described, it is effectively useless. Especially given the amazing post by Ryan Kent on this question (http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-anyone-have-any-suggestions-on-removing-spammy-links) I have sort of given up on the strategy of contacting these webmasters on a case by case basis and asking for the links to be removed, especially if Google is not going to accept anything less than a perfect backlink portfolio. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to clean up these links.
Meanwhile, this company is a big name in a very competitive online market and it really needs to see lead generation from organic SEO. (Please don't give me any told-you-so's here, it was out of my hands.)
MY QUESTION IS:
WHAT SHOULD WE DO? Should we just keep the domain going and focus on only building quailty links from now on? Most of our keywords fall anywhere from position 40 to position 150 right now, so it's not like ALL hope is lost. But as any SEO knows that is basically as good as not being indexed at all.
OTHER OPTION: We have an old domain that is the less-SEO-friendly, but it is the official name of our company . com, and this domain is currently 301'd to our live (SEO-friendly) domain. The companyname.com domain is also older than our SEO friendly domain. Should we manually move our site back over to the old domain since there is no penalty on it? It seems like a lot of sites that are ranking are brand new anyway (except their URL's are loaded with keywords.)
Blah, I know that was a lot, but I'm feeling lost and ANY insight would be helpful.
Thanks as always SEOMoz!!
-
Thank you Rand. I also think this is the best idea. Really appreciate the help.
-
I've not seen penalties transfer via the 301 very often (in fact, I've only heard stories of it but never seen it confirmed with a public example). I'd probably do the 301 - as you said, it's not a great experience otherwise for visitors who bookmarked or get referred to the old domain.
If you're really nervous, you could create a message that shows up on the site and refers visitors to the new location, but that's a lot of extra work, and requires that extra click, which isn't great for UX.
I suppose if you're sure Google is going to pass the penalty, you could use the 301, but robots.txt block the site from being accessed, so Google wouldn't actually see the site being moved over (thus, it would show Google you're doing this purely for UX and not for SEO).
-
Wow, a response from Rand! I'm honored :-D. Thank you for your input.
You're definitely right about Google "scaring" people into White Hat SEO and I think they were very effective in that sense.
I'm actually going to be moving onto a new (strictly white hat) marketing company but I need to come up with a future plan for this current (penalized) site.
If I advise this company to rebuild a website using the old domain, what would you suggest as far as redirecting the current (penalized) domain? I've heard a 301 redirect transfers the penalty to the new site. But I do anticipate that there will be a good number of visitors landing on the penalized site. Should I build a page that doesn't redirect but tells users "Please visit "newdomain.com" to learn more about our company" ? Or should we have both sites live simultaneously and just create all new content so as to avoid the duplicate content issue? Any suggestions?
Thank you all.
-
I think this is exactly what Google hoped would happen with the Penguin update - SEOs and marketers who invested in gray/black hat links would have such an utterly horrific time trying to dig out that it would scare a broad swath of the industry into more white hat territory. Whether that's actually working is arguable, but it was certainly a goal of the update.
If you are ready to make the move over to the old domain, I wouldn't stop you. However, if you've built up some valuable brand equity, visitor loyalty and marketing prowess outside of SEO on this site, there's a few other possibilities:
- Work hard on UX and UI. Google hates penalizing beautiful sites that visitors love, and if you do get a manual review, this can help.
- Make the content truly exceptional, too. Ensure that there's nothing that feels like artificial/manipulative/done-just-for-rankings stuff on the site. Again, this makes it more likely that any reconsideration request will work
- Send out as many requests for link removal as possible and include the lists of where/how you acquired links and how you've tried to remove them in your reconsideration request
- Hope and pray
This process might not get you back in, but it could work. Google's requiring a "good faith" effort and some proof of said effort, but there's a possibility your site might get by. For the future, I'd strongly recommend sticking to entirely editorially given/earned links.
Wish you luck!
-
if you're having to contact webmasters, I would bet at least some of them are getting bombarded by a lot of similar requests. If it's on sites of the type I am figuring we're having to deal with (low quality sites that were designed with no care, regard or concern for anything other than low-level SEO), they're very unlikely to care about people harmed by the changes. And just as likely, want to spend their time figuring out a new get rich off nonsense scheme.
-
Thank you for the advice Alan. Maybe we can hope that over time all those sites get deindexed and so the links disappear on their own, because I'm finding it impossible to contact webmasters / they don't seem happy to help us out.
-
Play with fire, get burned. Yes, you already know that. No, I don't think you personally should have to suffer through untold similar cliche's.
So here's the reality. Without cleaning up the profile, it's highly unlikely the site will ever recover. That leaves the only other reasonable option, which is the drastic one. Abandon the existing domain as far as SEO goes and start fresh with the clean domain.
That's potentially going to be the biggest challenge to get others to agree to, because those who have the guts to play with fire in a known dangerous environment typically have too big an ego to admit there isn't yet another quick and easy fix that instantly reaps big rewards on the scale that should never have been achieved previously in the first place.
However even Matt Cutts said this past week, that in worst case scenarios, people just may need to start with a new site. When Matt comes out and says that, you can be sure the potential for all hope to be gone on a now burned site to rebound is now lower than it ever was.
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
-
Is anyone witnessed complete or partial recovery from Penguin 2.1 yet?
Hello Everyone, I am analyzing and working on recovery of some sites that were hit by Penguin 2.1 on 4th Oct, 2013. I have done almost all fixes including Anchor Variations Social Sharing Local Links Diversity in Back-links but still not witnessed any real recovery. Is anyone witnessed Partial or Complete Recovery From Penguin 2.1? Thanks for your feedback in advance! Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Asjad0 -
Google admits it can take up to a year to refresh/recover your site after it is revoked from Penguin!
I found myself in an impossible situation where I was getting information from various people that seem to be "know it all's" but everything in my heart was telling me they were wrong when it came to the issues my site was having. I have been on a few Google Webmaster Hangouts and found many answers to questions I thought had caused my Penguin Penalty. After taking much of the advice, I submitted my Reconsideration Request for the 9th time (might have been more) and finally got the "revoke" I was waiting for on the 28th of MAY. What was frustrating was on May 22nd there was a Penguin refresh. This as far as I knew was what was needed to get your site back up in the organic SERPS. My Disavow had been submitted in February and only had a handful of links missing between this time and the time we received the revoke. We patiently waited for the next penguin refresh with the surety that we were heading in the right direction by John Mueller from Google (btw.. John is a great guy and really tries to help where he can). The next update came on October 4th and our rankings actually got worse! I spoke with John and he was a little surprised but did not go into any detail. At this point you have to start to wonder WHAT exactly is wrong with the website. Is this where I should rank? Is there a much deeper Panda issue. We were on the verge of removing almost all content from the site or even changing domains despite the fact that it was our brand name. I then created a tool that checked the dates of every last cached date of each link we had in our disavow file. The thought process was that Google had not re-crawled all the links and so they were not factored into the last refresh. This proved to be incorrect,all the links had been re-cached August and September. Nothing earlier than that,which would indicate a problem that they had not been cached in time. i spoke to many so called experts who all said the issue was that we had very few good links left,content issues etc.. Blah Blah Blah, heard it all before and been in this game since the late 90's, the site could not rank this badly unless there was an actual penalty as spam site ranked above us for most of our keywords. So just as we were about to demolish the site I asked John Mueller one more time if he could take a look at the site, this time he actually took the time to investigate,which was very kind of him. he came back to me in a Google Hangout in late December, what he said to me was both disturbing and a relief at the same time. the site STILL had a penguin penalty despite the disavow file being submitted in February over 10 months ago! And the revoke in May. I wrote this to give everyone here that has an authoritative site or just an old one, hope that not all is lots just yet if you are still waiting to recover in Google. My site is 10 years old and is one of the leaders in its industry. Sites that are only a few years old and have had unnatural link building penalties have recovered much faster in this industry which I find ridiculous as most of the time the older authoritative sites are the big trustworthy brands. This explains why Google SERPS have been so poor for the last year. The big sites take much longer to recover from penalties letting the smaller lest trustworthy sites prevail. I hope to see my site recover in the next Penguin refresh with the comfort of knowing that my site currently is still being held back by the Google Penguin Penalty refresh situation. Please feel free to comment below on anything you think is relevant.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gazzerman10 -
Penguin Hit, Looking for some advice from Takeshi Young
Hello, Takeshi had the good idea to compare google analytic traffic data to penguin updates. We may have got hit by Penguin 2.0 (#4) on May 22, 2013. There's nothing in GWT indicating it though. Most of our traffic is return customers, by the way. I've attached a Google Analytic Screenshot. It just happens to be the time when we removed a bunch of paid links. Will you look at this screenshot and make sure that it was Penguin, then give me some advice about 20 little blogs with keyword rich anchor text. 2 paid links that look editorial 1 sitewide paid link w/ keyword rich alt tag 1 more paid link that's an image near the footer on a single page, keyword rich anchor text. 1 paid link site with different types of links scattered across the site - 30 links total We have 70 links total - the above 25 are paid. penguin.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Vetting Link Opportunties that are Penguin Safe
I am looking to go after sites that are, and will never be, affected by Penguin/Panda updates. Is there a tool or a general rule of thumb on how to avoid such sites? Is there a method anyone is currently using to get good natural links post Penguin 2.0?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
Site Search external hosted pages - Penguin
Hi All, On the site www.myworkwear.co.uk we have a an externally hosted site search that also creates separately hosted pages of popular searches which rank in Google and create traffic. An example of this is listed below: Google Search: blue work trousers (appears on front page of Google) Site Champion Page: http://workwear.myworkwear.co.uk/workwear/Navy%20Blue%20Work%20Trousers Nearest Category page: http://www.myworkwear.co.uk/category/Mens-Work-Trousers-936.htm Could this be a penalisation or duplication factor? Could these be interpreted as a dodgy link factor? Thanks in advance for your help. Kind Regards, Andy Southall
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Starting fresh on a new url after serious Penguin update down rank
Hi friends My site www.acupunctureclinicvictoriabc.com was recently hit by the penguin update and i dropped to page 5 of local searchs for my key words. A while back I had some bad link building done and now paying for it:( I thought the disavow tool (used 4 months ago) would deal with this issue but apparently not The current url is feeling like a lost cause. My question is if I start fresh on a new url, can I use my old content (or even clone the site and move it to a new url) without being punished for duplicate content on the new site? Any recommendations for starting fresh? I really appreciate any thoughts on this matter, as I am feeling a bit lost and bummed about this issue thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Silasrose0 -
Syndicated content outperforming our hard work!
Our company (FindMyAccident) is an accident news site. Our goal is to roll our reporting out to all 50 states; currently, we operate full-time in 7 states. To date, the largest expenditure is our writing staff. We hire professional
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wayne76
journalists who work with police departments and other sources to develop written
content and video for our site. Our visitors also contribute stories and/or
tips that add to the content on our domain. In short, our content/media is 100% original. A site that often appears alongside us in the SERPs in the markets where we work full-time is accidentin.com. They are a site that syndicates accident news and offers little original content. (They also allow users to submit their own accident stories, and the entries index quickly and are sometimes viewed by hundreds of people in the same day. What's perplexing is that these entries are isolated incidents that have little to no media value, yet they do extremely well.) (I don't rest my bets with Quantcast figures, but accidentin does use their pixel sourcing and the figures indicate that they are receiving up to 80k visitors a day in some instances.) I understand that it's common to see news sites syndicate from the AP, etc., and traffic accident news is not going to have a lot of competition (in most instances), but the real shocker is that accidentin will sometimes appear as the first or second result above the original sources??? The question: does anyone have a guess as to what is making it perform so well? Are they bound to fade away? While looking at their model, I'm wondering if we're not silly to syndicate news in the states where we don't have actual staff? It would seem we could attract more traffic by setting up syndication in our vacant states. OR Is our competitor's site bound to fade away? Thanks, gang, hope all of you have a great 2013! Wayne0 -
Partner Site Hit with Penguin - Links hurt me
I work for a network of international websites, the site I work on is for Canada. Our partners in Australia were hit by penguin hard because they hired a black hat SEO guy and didn't know. He was creating profiles on highly authoritative sites and keyword stuffing them. Now, they've completely dropped off the SERP. This is where the issue occurs, because we are all international partners we are all linked together on the header of every page so visitors can choose their country. Now, because they were hit hard and we have reciprocal links (not for rankings but for usability) will we be affected? It seems like we have, but I just want some opinions out there. Also, should we go ahead and stop linking our sites between countries to avoid this mess?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0