Start over or try to recover?
-
I have a question about a site that was making good money while it was ranking, but no longer gets traffic.
This site did 3 things that might have gotten it in trouble:
1. Targeted keywords often showed up twice in the URL. So the url would be something like http://mydomain.com/keyword/keyword-included-in-title/
2. It got links from low-quality sites, including blog networks like (the now dead) BMR
3. It got lots of links with the same anchor text
The content quality is actually pretty good.
I don't know if the site got penalized by Panda, Penguin, or perhaps lost rank because of something else. What I can tell you is that the rank loss was gradual - one page at a time starting at the end of March and ending this month.
So the question is - in such a case:
Is it best to start over using good SEO practices?
Or is there a way to recover the sites?
-
I agree with Marcus, it depends on what kind of links your website does have. It generally sounds like to me, that you over optimized your website.
If you do have plenty of good links, it would simply be an issue of getting rid of the "crappy links" however if you do have a ton of these now non-indexed links, it might be best to start with a new page. -
Just be procedural. Deindex the other site, check it has gone, (site: query), create your new site. If the content does not existing somewhere else, it is not duplicate.
-
Thanks. What about duplicate content? Do I just ask Google to de-index the old site?
-
It sounds like you have some good content. If if is original then move it to a new domain if you can't get rid of the bad links.
-
Without a look at the link profile itself, it's hard to make a call on this. If there are lots of good to honest links smothered by some junk then yeah, recovery may be worth fighting for. But... if the link profile is just junk, and it's going to be hard to clean up, well, you are better suited by just burning that house down and starting again.
-
I think that a lot of people are in the same boat as you so don't worry, many sites have began the road to recovery after the recent updates.
To de-index a URl from Google, go into Google Webmaster Tools for your website, then go to 'Optimization'>'Remove URLs' then type in the old URL and Google will remove it from the search engine completely. This mayy take a couple of days though.
I would also then create a new sitemap once you have done the new pages and submit this through Webmaster Tools also.
Matt.
-
I think I will do this because I don't know what else I could do. If I don't change the url - then I have the keyword in there twice no matter what I do. And it would take forever to dilute the bad links. Just one more question. How do I ask Google to de-index the old URL? Remove it from my sitemap?
-
What I would do is to delete the old page and then create a whole new page. Because the old page is no longer on the server it shouldn't be punished for duplicate content. Just make sure that you ask Google to de-index the old URL and index the new one.
Bear in mind though that this is really a last resort method. But if you are having no luck at all with recovering from Penguin then this method could be more effective than just waiting it out.
Let me know how it goes and if you need any more info then just let me know.
Matt.
-
Thanks, Matt, for your response.
Creating a new page might be the best approach for me.
If I do that - should I remove the old one? Can I use the exact same content? I don't want to get into duplicate content issues.
-
Hi There,
I have been having trouble with the same thing and have found some good advice throughout the process of recovering.
One method that I have heard people suggesting was to change the URL of the page that is affected and then set up a redirect to the new page. From personal experience, I can tell you that this doesn't work. It is simply a very short-term fix (i.e., a few days if your lucky), then Google will start punishing you for the redirected page.
If it is only specific pages on the website that are being affected, try to pin-point the exact aspects of those pages that could be deemed as black/grey-hat. If it is the case that some of your webpages are ranking then you can take solace in the fact that your whole website hasn't been banned. So there is still hope to recover.
Try using OSE to check out all of your different anchor text and links, as well as looking through webmaster tools. If you can, contact these websites to have your link completely removed because at the end of the day, if your not ranking because of these links then they may as well be removed completely.
You could also attempt to remove your old pages that have been punished and create new URLs completely (don't redirect the old pages, simply delete them altogether) and just use the old content that was on them. This way you will get rid of all of the links to the punished page, and start a fresh new page with your old content. Re-index the pages through Google and slowly but surely, you will eventually start ranking again. Obviously this is not possible for your homepage, so maybe use this methods for some of your other pages and then put most of your effort into sorting out the linking profile on your index page.
I hope this has helped slightly and good luck!
Matt.
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
-
Strategies to recover from a Google Penalty?
2 years ago we took over a client who had a hacked site and also had signed up with a black hat SEO team that set up 50 spammy directory links back to the site. Since then we have cleaned up the hacks, had the site reviewed by Google and readded to the Search Index, and disavowed all the directory links through GWT. Over the last 2 years, we've encouraged the client to create new content and have developed a small but engaged social following. The website is www.fishtalesoutfitting.com/. The site's domain authority is 30, but it struggles to rank higher than 20 for even uncompetitive long tail keywords. Other sites with much lower domain authorities outrank the site for our primary keywords. We are now overhauling the site design and content. We are considering creating an entirely new URL for the primary domain. We would then use 301 redirects from the old url to the new. We'd welcome insight into why the current site may still be getting penalized, as well as thoughts on our strategy or other recommendations to recover from the events of 2 years ago. Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mlwilmore0 -
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 -
Negative SEO campaign just started against my site. What do I do?
As the question says, I have just got alerts of new links, being clearly a negative seo campaign against my site. We are talking, lots of spammy, rude anchor text type keywords being used. Whilst I only have alerts of a small number (around 30), it has just happened and I know from the type of spammy links they are that more will be coming. So, question is, should I disavow? Do I keep submitting new disavows every few days as more are discovered? Any advice will be greatly be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jonathan790 -
Recovering from an algorithmic bodyslam
Hi there. We inherited a client who didn't receive a manual penalty, but holy cow they have a good sized algorithmic penalty on their site. Here is what we have done since receiving the client: Client arrived with a bad backlink profile and an algorithmic penalty. We knew this, but underestimated the effort in removing it. We researched great forum posts like http://moz.com/community/q/google-penguin-2-0-how-to-recover http://moz.com/community/q/penguin-2-1-how-to-recover The researched great blog posts like http://moz.com/ugc/what-a-penguin-recovery-looks-like http://moz.com/ugc/recovery-from-google-penguin-tips-from-the-trenches http://moz.com/ugc/a-theory-for-preventing-recovering-from-a-google-penguin-penalty Outside of Moz, we researched a lot as well. We felt armed that we needed to do 3 major things. Remove all of the bad backlinks Create good content within the site Fix any unnatural on page SEO tactics (keyword stuffing, etc) Here is how we tackled it step by step Step 1: For step 1, we contacted over 100 of the bad backlinks. Many of them wanted a fee for removing the backlinks. They were from sites that were literally like "freeseobacklinks.org". Crazy bad ones. But we only got a few removed. The rest either ignored us or wanted some money. Hence our round(s) of disavow. Our SEO manager at the time of the first disavow only did 50 domains on the disavow. She was extremely thorough, followed the guidelines to a T, and performed it. We actually fell back in ranking afterward, even though I didn't think it was possible. With nothing to lose, besides lots of time and budget, we went through thousands of links and manually compiled an extravagant spreadsheet for our next round of disavow. Again, limited to no response from site owners. So we went ahead and pushed forth with nearly 300 domains for the disavow. By this time, the site was in the abyss, so it couldn't hurt anymore. We kept all of the great links, which surprisingly there were a fair amount. Step 2:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Boogily
Our SEO manager and our content writer began to write for the website. Our graphic design created an awesome infographic, and a good slideshare too. We've been putting 3-4 articles / posts on the site monthly. Typical word range is 750+ Step 3:
We did a full site analysis and removed all unnatural location based keywords. There wasn't a ton of unnatural on page SEO going on. The bulk of the damage must have came from the bad backlinks. Summary:
On top of this we have been doing this for at least 6 months. All of the pages that are hit by the penalty are just gone. Nowhere to be found on Google, unless you search with the site operator or search for that exact page. We seem to make zero headway with all of this. I'm not sure what else we can be doing. We even optimized for conversions and longer time on site, as well as page speed. We've confirmed that there is no manual penalty. I'm starting to feel as if the site is permanently deemed bad or something. I also don't want to keep wasting our writers and manager's time on this one. Any ideas on next steps? Can anyone restore my confidence in this site? Thanks for the long read and any response, Have a great day,1 -
Rankings dropped, should I start a new website?
Hello, my rankings dropped last year (penguin update) - I think it was April 2012 and the website went from 300 visitors per day to 10 per day. This probably happened because I bought links, but I also did a lot of manual and natural SEO (at that time). After the drop, I didn't know what to do... so I did some manual SEO, blog comments, forum posts, article publications (lets say 60 links in total - with diverse anchor texts - brand keywords, etc) and then I paused working on the site to see if there will be any changes... and 1 year latter, there are still no changes. My site used to be in the top results of the first page and now it is totally out of Google. http://getmoreyoutubeviews.com Should I move on and start a new website or do something to fix this one? Thanks Alex
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | buysocialexposure0 -
Is there any value in "starting from scratch" on a new domain?
Hi, Our ecommerce store - we have had some duplicate content issues and they have been corrected, but of course, Google takes time to pick up on these. Our link profile is very poor, so we wont lose a lot by going to a new domain in that sense. My question is, in what instances is it worthwhile starting under a new domain? And in which not? Presumably you can also 301 the whole site - when is it worth doing this or not? Thanks, Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Trying to determine if my site was de-indexed...
I ran a search using the allinsite:floridainboundmarketing.com command and found that virtually all of my pages are not being returned in the results. I'm one of those who (foolishly) used ALN blog network for a few months, got the unnatural links notice in WMT and on advice of other SEOs (including some here) I ignored it based on the idea that if my SERPS dropped due to alog update that a request for reconsideration was of no value. As I watched my SERPs dropping I was confident that it was simply because those links were no longer being counted and overall link profile was poor, so the results started dropping. I've not read where G has gone back and started de-indexing pages for such sites but it may be happening as (unless I'm wrong) my site is gone... Anyone got any ideas? Am I searching correctly?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sdennison0 -
How to recover my site from -50 penalty
One of my sites was hit after Google confirmed its panda 3.2 update. The site ranked very well for many heavy traffic keywords in my niche. But all of a sudden, 80% of the keywords which ranked high in the previous dropped 50 in SERP. I know it is a -50 penalty , but i do not know how to recover from it. The link building campaign is almost the same as before and all of the articles are unique. BTW, i have two image ads on the sidebar and 7 affiliate links on the bottom of the page. Any input will be great appreciated !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aoneshosesun0