Really, is there much difference between an unnatural links warning and Penguin?
-
We know that the unnatural links warnings are manual and that Penguin is algorithmic. (I'm not talking about the latest round of confusing unnatural links warnings, but the ones sent out months ago that eventually resulted in a loss of rankings for those who didn't clean their link profiles up.)
Is there much difference in the recovery process for either? From what I can see, both are about unnatural/spammy linking to your site. The only difference I can see is that once you feel you've cleaned up after getting an unnatural links warning you can file a reconsideration request. But, if you've cleaned up after a Penguin hit you need to wait for the next Penguin refresh in order to see if you've recovered.
Are there other differences that I am not getting?
-
Thank you.
-
Yes, I would say so.
-
Thanks Ruth, so would you agree that the cleanup is the same? Whether you had a manual warning, or you got hit with Penguin, the way you would recover is the same (other than filing for reconsideration request with the former)?
-
The main difference between the two is that a reconsideration request is more likely to work with a link warning than with a regular Penguin hit. Penguin is algorithmic, whereas the link warnings were usually triggered by/resulted in manual penalties. Either way, it's a good idea to try to get as many spammy links removed/updated as possible, as well as build some new, non-spam links to increase the percentage of your links that are not spammy.
I wouldn't suggest building more spammy links to drown out the Penguin-targeted links - why not spend that time and effort building some natural links? They will last longer and if you do have to do a reconsideration request you're not running the risk that Google will also see your brand-new spam links.
-
haha been hit with a penalty because of spamming links? spam more links to your site that will fix everything! crazy
-
Is there much difference in the recovery process for either [Penguin or manual link penalty]?
Theoretically no, practically yes.
A manual penalty will be reviewed by the Google Spam Team. If you are not successful at removing the links, you will need to provide extensive documentation on the steps taken to remove the penalty. When Google manually reviews links, they will not remove the penalty simply because you adjusted anchor text. If the link is spammy, it needs to be removed regardless of the anchor text.
A penguin penalty can be algorithmically removed. Many SEO companies are simply manipulating the anchor text rather then removing the spammy links and they are getting away with it to at least some degree...for now. Another tactic is to "drown out" the links penalized by Penguin with other spammy links which do not use anchor text. These solutions are quite bad as these sites are subject to future penalties as Google improves their algorithms.
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
-
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different
Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
and the other page is
https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂0 -
Disavow Links Notification
No manual actions on our sites, just Penguin related. I put in a disavow for one site in October and Webmaster Tools kept a message up for some time saying the disavow links file for that site had been updated. I put in a disavow for another site of ours last week and I've had no such message. I checked and the file is there. Was this an intentional change on Google's part? Just want to make sure something's not messed up here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Charity links
Quick question - Are links on charity websites with a small mention about what your company does good links to go for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Link masking in WordPress
in Wordpress, I want to block Google from crawling my site using the primary navigation. I want to use anchor text links in the body and custom menus in the sidebar to make maximum benefit of the "first link counts" rule. In short, I want to obfuscate all of the links in my primary navigation without using the dreaded nofollow. I do not want to block other links to the pages - body text, custom menus, etc. . This would be site wide. I'd rather not use Ajax or any type of programming unless it's part of a plugin. Can anyone make a simple, Google-friendly suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Best links to gain?
Hi, Just a quick one to see what peoples thoughts are regarding links. I have just gained a free link on a .gov website in the UK. In one of their offers pages, will this provide any link value or domain trust to me and what can the benefits be SEO wise from having a link on a government domain? The link is just the website url with a a few lines of text detailing our address etc... so its not got any anchor text regarding targetting one of our brands. It is equallly, less or more important to target anchor text links to specific brands or to get good high quality links from trusted sites such as the .gov one I have linking to my root domain? The website is a local council website in the UK. And was listed by a member of their staff, who only list in the offer page if your offering discount to council members etc..., so its not a spammed page or anything like that. What are peoples views on anchor text links vs domain url links? Cheers Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Do sites like these really work?
http://www.linkaloha.com/ This company claims to have a good tool. To me it looks like spam. They claim to automate link building and they claim to use Googles Panda to their advantage. This site does however use link diversity, not sure about how relevant the sources are for each keyword... Would this fall into black hat or gray area SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
If google ignores links from "spammy" link directories ...
Then why does SEO moz have this list: http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-directory ?? Included in that list are some pretty spammy looking sites such as: <colgroup><col width="345"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg
| http://www.site-sift.com/ |
| http://www.2yi.net/ |
| http://www.sevenseek.com/ |
| http://greenstalk.com/ |
| http://anthonyparsons.com/ |
| http://www.rakcha.com/ |
| http://www.goguides.org/ |
| http://gosearchbusiness.com/ |
| http://funender.com/free_link_directory/ |
| http://www.joeant.com/ |
| http://www.browse8.com/ |
| http://linkopedia.com/ |
| http://kwika.org/ |
| http://tygo.com/ |
| http://netzoning.com/ |
| http://goongee.com/ |
| http://bigall.com/ |
| http://www.incrawler.com/ |
| http://rubberstamped.org/ |
| http://lookforth.com/ |
| http://worldsiteindex.com/ |
| http://linksgiving.com/ |
| http://azoos.com/ |
| http://www.uncoverthenet.com/ |
| http://ewilla.com/ |0