Do Google Always Tell You About Penalties?
-
Hi
One of my clients has recently suffered a big decline in rankings on some of their keywords, going from positions in the top 10 to sub 50 for some of their keywords, but not all. Their website is still indexed and there is no link warning from Google. Some of their links from a previous link builder are dodgy and we have already tried to contact the other company for removal but to no avail.
Any ideas where I start? So far I planning to increase the branded anchor link and add some content as the site is fairly light on content. Is it worth doing a reconsideration request and mention the bad links incase this is the problem. Has anyone seen any particular good resources on what to do when it appears you have a penalty. None of my other clients have been effected by Panda or Penguin and although I have done some general reading I need to know what action to take and get up to speed FAST!
Thanks in advance.
Kind regards
Karen
-
Penalty can be limited and i have seen websites that drop its ranking for few keywords or few areas of the website got hit by the update! so its fairly possible!
-
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond, I saw a decline in traffic on Saturday so likely to be the latest Panda update. I just thought a penalty would result in a penalty for all keyword rankings not just some. I will try the reconsideration request, check out Majestic SEO links and see what happens and build more quality content in the meantime.
Kind regards
Karen
-
That right check when the traffic has dropped and then the current changes in the website (if done any) if there is nothing major has been changed on your website and dates where the traffic has been dropped is close to the Panda or Penguin update then you are one of the millions of culprit.
Check your Google webmaster tools and see if you see any link request and if not then you have to get in to doggy links and remove then and tell Google about it... If you will be way to lucky your website will come up in rankings or otherwise you have to delete as many doggy links as possible and build as many high quality links as possible.
To see your complete link profile try and get the links from Majestic SEO, Google Webmaster Tool or more and if you are good with budget then try and use the Link Removal software to spot and remove as many bad links as possible.
Hope this helps!
-
First look at the Analytics, and try to determine when exactly the drop in traffic happened. If it coincides with a known panda or penguin update, then you probably found your problem.
If no luck there, I'd do the reconsideration request but don't mention anything about bad links. You'll get a reply of either "no manual spam actions" or "please remove more bad links and try again"
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
-
Do Google Penalties Always Follow a Redirects to New Domains?
I have a couple sites that were penalized by Google for hosting content that made Google look bad. After a major newspaper showcased what was going on they suddenly took a major hit as if someone at Google flipped a switch and told their system not to rank the content for anything other than their brand names. The article made Google look bad because the newspaper highlighted a lot of unverified user generated accusations the reporters assumed not to be true in the context of "these accusations are mostly false, but they still show up on the first page when people search Google." I was thinking one way to fight this would simply be to host the content at a different domain, but I am concerned about the new domain being penalized as well. I don't want to completely shut down all of the original sites because some of them have brand recognition. The oldest domain is 12 years old with backlinks from several news outlets which is why the content ranked so well, but after the penalty that is only the case on Bing. I've read various articles about this tactic. Some say that you will almost always pass the penalty to the new domain if you do a 301 redirect, but the penalties at issue in those articles were for things like buying links or other black hat tactics. This is somewhat different in that I wasn't doing anything black hat, they just decided not to let the site rank for political reasons. I was hoping that maybe that type of penalty wouldn't follow it, but right now I am leaning towards simply creating a second site to syndicate articles. It will need to attribute the articles to their sources though, so they will need either no followed links or possibly a redirection script that bots cannot follow. I would really like it if I could simply change the first site to its .net or .org equivalent and 301 everything though.
Technical SEO | | PostAlmostAnything0 -
301 Redirect domain with penalty
Wondering if I could get a few views on this please... I have added an affiliate store to a domain I own, however I forgot to noindex the product pages which were duplicate content of the merchants. Despite a good deal of backlink building the site will not do much in the engines at all, doesn't even come up on the first few pages for it's own name! This suggests to me that I have a duplicate content penalty. Try as I may I cannot get it removed so am thinking of cloning the domain to a new domain, however, I do not want to lose the links I collected so I am planning on 301ing them. While I will not get all the link power moved over, I should at least get credit for some of them which will kick start the new domain. Can anyone forsee any potential issues with doing this? Is there a danger of 301ing a site with a penalty that the penalty would be carried over? I know there is no penalty on the links, no WMT warnings etc, it is the content causing the issue. Thanks, Carl
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
My whole directory dropped from google
Hi there I have lost a whole directory in Google rankings and this is where my traffic was coming from. Do you know why this would happen? It is the eCommerce part of the site. So if I do site:www.domain.com the site is there and then site:www.domain.com/directory is not there any more. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | vcasebourne0 -
Why did Google stop indexing my site?
Google used to crawl my site every few minutes. Suddenly it stopped and the last week it indexed 3 pages out of thousands. https://www.google.co.il/#q=site:www.yetzira.com&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:w&sa=X&ei=I9aTUfTTCaKN0wX5moCgAw&ved=0CBgQpwUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=cfac44f10e55f418&biw=1829&bih=938 What could cause this to happen and how can I solve this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
What does the Google Crawler see when crawling this page?
If you look at this page http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/61/185/730/Batteries. You will see we have a vehicle filter on it. Right now you only see a picture of a battery and some bad text that needs to be updated ( We just hired a copywriter!). Our question is when google crawls this site will thy just see this or will they see all the products that appear after you pick a "machine type" "make" "model" and "year" Any help would be great. Right now we think it just sees this main page how we have set things up; however, we know that the crawler is also crawling some ajax. We just want to be sure of things.
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
Google Indexed Only 1 Page
Hi, I'm new and hope this forum can help me. I have recently resubmit my sitemap and Google only Indexed 1 Page. I can still see many of my old indexed pages in the SERP's? I have upgraded my template and graded all my pages to A's on SEOmoz, I have solid backlinks and have been building them over time. I have redirected all my 404 errors in .htaccess and removed /index.php from my url's. I have never done this before but my website runs perfect and all my pages redirect as I hoped. My site: www.FunerallCoverFinder.co.za How do I figure out what the problem is? Thanks in Advance!
Technical SEO | | Klement690 -
Google News URL Format
Hi, We are currently redesigning our gaming website (www.totallygn.com) and one of our main goals is to get listed by Google News in future. Looking at the Google News URL requirements "The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits." How does the above affect SEO structure? I was planning on using a format such as www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review how would this compare to something like? www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review234 Thanks in advance for your help
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon0 -
Google Webmaster Site Performance
In webmaster tools, under labs/site performance google provides your ave page load time. When google grades a page, does it use how long that specific page loads -or- Does google use the overall ave page load time for the domain as provided in lab/site performance
Technical SEO | | Bucky0