Penguin: Carry On & Hope Or Start A New Site
-
I'm at a loss and no so-called SEO agency/expert I've hired appears to know the main causes of our post-Penguin downfall of our traffic.
To set the scene, I set up a voucher code site (www.ozvouchercodes.com.au) in Australia 3 years ago and since, it's been growing very well up until Google launched the Penguin update in April.
Having read as much as I could on the update my understanding is toxic links cause the slap. For on-site I've checked the site and tried to reduce keywords [spamming], increased [unique] content across the site and made sure there are as few instances of duplicate content as possible.
To attempt to understand my back link profile I've used SEOmoz & Link Detective as the current SEO agency give me little visibility on this.
It appears we're a little top heavy with 32% & 11% of are keywords containing 'coupons' and 'promotion codes' respectively. Consequently we no longer appear on those two terms but also hundreds of other terms we once appeared in the top 3 postitions.
The Link Detective report downloaded also appears to have a number of back links with the words 'Penalized' and 'Banned' next to them. Unfortunately there is no explanation on Link Detective whether this needs action or not.
My current SEO agency suggest that we have been too focused on a limited number of keywords and that a few more months of diversifying the range will solve it.
So do I spend another £X amount for 3-6 months of SEO or drop the site on a new URL and start again.
Any ideas?
Any help is very welcome & appreciated.
Henry
-
Thank you for sharing that story. It all makes sense. Using an automated link building script to create spam links with "natural" anchor text.
I wonder how the site owners will react when Google improves their algorithm next and all the old links PLUS all the new ones need to be removed. What a mess.
-
Ryan - Thanks for taking the time to discuss Penguin recovery. Your initial thread and follow-up Moz article were very informative. On a lighter note, I moderate all of the comments to my blog. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when an automated spamer targeted the keywords "click here". LOLZ. I suppose they were going to use a bot to attempt to spam a more "natural" link profile. Only one comment like it I've seen and I was tempted to award a small amount of creativity points although their clients are probably being sold a terrible bill of goods about how to acquire a "natural" link profile.
-
Hey Henry, if you put this work out to 'seo experts' you are pretty much a victim of the system and bad advice (and people making a quick buck like you say). Sorry buddy, hope it works out for you. Marcus
-
Thank you for your help Marcus.
Whilst I have some knowledge of SEO it was good of you to put my sites situation into perspective with an honest answer to help me make a better decision.
All the best.
-
Thanks Ryan for your help. I wish I had the knowledge and help a few years back when I first started. I put my trust in to 'SEO experts' who quite possibly acted as agents on behalf of cheap out-sourced labour from developing countries with the aim of earning a quick buck. I'll do some sums and work out whether I want to start again or not.
-
**It appears we're a little top heavy with 32% & 11% of are keywords containing 'coupons' and 'promotion codes' respectively. **
You understand the basic problem... but you are sugar-coating it with the words "a little". Get rid of all of these links or move any worthwhile content to a new domain. After you have done than then stop "building links" and start earning them.
-
Hey Henry
I have just taken a quick look at your link profile in open site explorer and I think your agency is being wildly optimistic. Simply, adding more links with a wider variety of keywords is simply not going to work. Likewise, if they are using the same historical approaches to add the links then they are likely to dig you an even bigger hole.
There is only one well documented case of recovery I am aware of being the WPMU site and they were fortunate in that they could remove a huge swathe of links in one fell swoop. Looking at your link profile, you don't have any such options.
Some very quick statistics here.
1400 linking domains
- 300 approx are branded (various)
- 100 branded + keyword (various)
- 1000 keywords only (various)
Then, anchor text is only part of the picture, looking at the sites that are linking to you, they are pretty weak in general. Link farms, content farms, article sites - it's a real mess! In fact, I have not found one good to honest link that is not from a spun, barely literate article.
So, what do you do? Well, in my mind, the first thing you should do is clean up the mess and see if you can bounce back. But you have some real work to do here, no doubt about that.
I wish I could give you happier news but when it comes to applying the phrase 'toxic link profile' then your link profile is just that. Lots and lots of, and I hesitate to even use the word, 'articles' with links to your site but they are clearly outsourced webspam articles written by someone who's first language was not english.
It's very hard to advise the exact course of action, but certainly, just 'throwing some more links at it' is not the way to go here. Any work you do should be to clean up but looking at your link profile, I have looked at about 100 links and not found one that was not a 100% total webspam.
The fact of the matter is, your site, and your marketing is exactly the deliberate manipulation of search results which Google has been targeting so it may be that starting again is your best approach. Certainly, if out of that 1400 links, if there are such a small percentage of real, honest links, then that may be your only real choice.
Google has targeted three things of late:
- link farms
- web spam
- artificial links
Unfortunately, your site is (was) propped up by artificial links from web spam on link farms - so to dig your way out of this hole could be tough and may leave you with little actual link equity to make it worthwhile.!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news so don't shoot the messenger!
Marcus
-
Henry,
I encourage you to read this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
My current SEO agency suggest that we have been too focused on a limited number of keywords and that a few more months of diversifying the range will solve it.
I hear this advice a lot and to be quite candid, it pisses me off.
Google's message is quite clear and it has been for some time. STOP BUILDING LINKS AND START EARNING THEM. The point of Penguin is to penalize sites which built links in an effort to manipulate search ranking. The manner is which Penguin identifies links currently is to examine anchor text.
Many SEOs have the idea that all they need to do to fix manipulative links is fix the anchor text. It is shocking to see how many people are confusing the mechanism with the message.
White hat SEO....the kind of SEO which does not get penalized....is about building value for clients. It's about never having to worry that a client's site will be penalized. It sounds like you paid an agency in the past to build manipulative links on your behalf, and the result is your site is now penalized. So the solution they are proposing is to build more manipulative links to your site, but this time the links will be disguised better.
Could this solution work? It might! The question is...for how long. I predict Penguin will continue to evolve in a similar manner to Panda. If that is true, Google will continue to focus on manipulative links and get better at detection just how Panda continues to improve its ability to detect low quality content. IF that happens, then paying for more links to be built is likely a very bad idea for the long term health of your site.
As far as ideas, you can clean up your link profile by removing the bad links to your site, or find another domain. Those are the only two choices I would recommend.
Please note this advise is controversial and many SEOs will disagree. The advice offered is mine which you are welcome to take or leave.
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
-
Should I built a microsite for client's new service or add a new section to an existing new website?
We built a new website for one of our clients. Covering services A B C mostly commercial and industrial B2B construction service. We bought him a brand new domain called serviceAcompanyname.com The website uses a brand new domain and as no DA and PA yet. The client wants a new section added to the Website concerning a new service ( we are going to call it service D) which is still a local service but offered to Home owners. Should we buy a new domain called serviceD-region-companyname.com and make a microsite covering the topic and work on backlinks and links in parallel for both sites, or would we be better off just adding a new section to the existing website and work on the main DA. Will it be easier in the future to enhance 2 different domains or a single one even though all services are not targeting the same audience.
Link Building | | escteam0 -
How is this site ranked so high on Google?
How on earth does "southeastasiatravelblog.com" rank No 3 on Google for "Asian travel blog"? It's just a collection of basically PR type travel articles. I have profiled its backlinks using Open Site Explorer and 71% of them are dead. The rest seem to be mostly "run of site" links from his other websites, which aren't particularly travel or Asia related. The highest PA for a live backlink to this site is a link from within his own website (PA 27, DA 15). Most of his backlink anchors are URLs and look fairly EMD to me. The site has few shares (6 FB shares, 7 FB likes, 1 Twitter share). So what makes it rank so highly for this phrase? My site I'm comparing against is "travelnasia.com" which is a fairly new domain with a DA 23, PA 31 and about the same amount of shares but far fewer backlinks at this stage because I recently changed URLs to shake off what might have been an algorithm penalty from Google. I am now receiving a growing level of Google search traffic again, but it's a long climb back. I'm looking at strategies, which is why I was checking out the site above.
Link Building | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Site wide back links
Hi, One of our sites has a site-wide link from another site. So, Google sees 6700 pages from that site link to one of our pages. Is that something to be concerned about? The other site is http://www.daum.net/ We also have 2000 pages that blogspot.com links to us from. Both these sites have high domain authority, so I would hope all those links score well. But I certainly don't want to be penalized for links that appear spammy. Thank you in advance.
Link Building | | seotis0 -
Link Building & Moz metrices
I am just starting up so no flaming please. Okay so i was given a project and i was amused to see a lot of backlinks to the website with viagra pills title. This is why i assume the domain authority is very low. I tried asking a few website owners to drop the links but they said its a lot of manual work they wont do it(that was shocking) So what next? Would building authority links in any domains help me in this case?
Link Building | | hardik_hrc0 -
How do you remove links TO your site?
Lots of old links to our wine rack store site from many years ago, how do I get these removed? block them? Not sure if Penguin got us because of these....
Link Building | | AmazingUniverse560 -
Link Building for a New Blog
We are setting up a new blog and I was wondering what is the best way to build good quality links for a new website? I have been researching this quite a bit on the forums and a lot of people talk about writing good content which I agree with however no one will find that content if we are not ranking in Google for our keywords. From what I have read the following is what I should be doing Directory's Creating Link-bait (Info-graphics) PR Releases or Getting News Sites to link to us I have heard a lot of mention of using Articles sites like ezinearticles but I have also read that Post Panda that they dont have as much link juice as they once had and also I don't think that for a Blog that we should be using it as well but maybe I am wrong? Would appreciate some peoples suggestions
Link Building | | The_Zero_Wolf0 -
Does it hurt your site to syndicate content on other sites?
Does publishing an article from your site on other sites hurt your site if you require a link back to your site? If website B, C, and D publish an article found site A, but they link back to site A, does that hurt or help site A?
Link Building | | nicole.healthline0 -
First 100 links for every new site?
Is there a rule of thumb I am unaware of or a place that others start to get links for every new site they create, something like the "first 100 links for every new site" regardless of content? I know you always start building links around what the content of your site is about, but does anyone have a rule of thumb that you always start with links from certain sites regardless of the site content. For example for a local company: Google Places, Bing Local, Linkedin, Facebook, Localeze etc. etc. I just want to make sure I am taking quality first steps for every site I start and was wondering if anyone could give me some good rules of thumb or resources.
Link Building | | photoseo10