Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Google penguin penalty(s), please help

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Google penguin penalty(s), please help

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    2
    751
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • MaartenvandenBos
      MaartenvandenBos last edited by

      Hi MozFans,

      I have got a question out of the field about www.coloringpagesabc.com.
      Question is why the rankings and traffic are going down down down the last 4 months.

      Costumer thinks he got hit by google penguin update(s).

      The site has about 600 page’s/posts al ‘optimized’ for old seo:
      - Almost all posts are superb optimized for one keyword combination (like … coloring pages)

      • there is a high keyword density on the keyword
      • titles and descriptions are all the same like: <keyword>and this is the rest of my title, This is my description <keyword>and i like it
      • internal linking is all with a ‘perfect’  keyword anchor text
      • there is a ok backlink profile, not much links to inner pages
        -  there are social signals
      • the content quality is low

      The site to me looks like a seo over optimized content farm

      Competition:
      When I look at the competition. The most coloring pages websites don’t offer a lot of content (text) on there page. The offer a small text and the coloring pages (What it is about :-))

      How to get the rankings back:
      What I was thinking to do.

      • rewrite the content to a smaller text. Low keyword density on the keyword and put the coloring pages up front.
      • rewrite all titles and descriptions to unique titles and descriptions
      • Make some internal links to related posts with a other anchor text.
      • get linkbuilding going on inner pages
      • get more social signals

      Am I on the right track?

      I can use some advise what to do, and where to start.

      Thanks!!</keyword></keyword>

      Maarten

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • EGOL
        EGOL last edited by

        Probably a Panda problem.

        The site has thin content:  Lots of the pages have close to zero content.

        The site has duplicate content:  Content was stolen by your client or others stole it from him.  Look here.

        ==============

        The title tags need work:

        <title>woody-coloring-pages-002 - Coloring Pages ABC Kids Fun Pagetitle>
        

        ==============

        The site has a huge intellectual property problem.  There may be DMCA's against the site.  Rankings could be reduced by the Emanuel Update.

        ==============

        Potential Penguin problems:  The site solicits "link exchange" and "link partners".

        ==============

        My advice to client would be to abandon this site unless he has rights to the images.

        <title>woody-coloring-pages-002 - Coloring Pages ABC Kids Fun Pagetitle>
        
        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        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.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • nkennett

          Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair

          technical seo getting beaten sites with no seo ranking 1

          I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO: Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce Writing high quality articles and blog posts Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE. Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069 Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page. But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here. Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
          NexStar 8SE
          Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
          NexStar 8SE Canada I have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nkennett
          0
        • BobAnderson

          Please help need some advice?

          Can any of you guys please help me I have alerts on links coming in and it looks like recently someone did this, it looks maliciously done as it is only our domain mentioned and most are brand new posts? http://testosteroneclinicindenve53950.shotblogs.com/testosterone-clinic-in-denver-fundamentals-explained-6102386 http://claytondmnnp.ampedpages.com/Details-Fiction-and-testosterone-clinic-in-denver-16897309 http://vinylvehiclecarwrap38041.alltdesign.com/a-review-of-vinyl-vehicle-car-wrap-9574042 http://devinxccct.educationalimpactblog.com/1784474/little-known-facts-about-vinyl-vehicle-car-wrap http://keeganbsftf.ka-blogs.com/7488539/how-vinyl-vehicle-car-wrap-can-save-you-time-stress-and-money http://andybxoes.thezenweb.com/vinyl-vehicle-car-wrap-Fundamentals-Explained-17581028 http://kylerhfdzu.blogkoo.com/not-known-details-about-vinyl-vehicle-car-wrap-9029141 http://troyytkyn.timeblog.net/7695911/the-greatest-guide-to-vinyl-vehicle-car-wrap http://waylontyzab.pointblog.net/testosterone-clinic-in-denver-Secrets-16335972 http://testosteroneclinicindenve30516.onesmablog.com/Top-testosterone-clinic-in-denver-Secrets-17252737 http://emiliogkmop.blogofoto.com/7667522/top-guidelines-of-testosterone-clinic-in-denver http://caidenaczxt.blogs-service.com/7514172/testosterone-clinic-in-denver-fundamentals-explained http://daltonpyfms.mybjjblog.com/5-simple-statements-about-testosterone-clinic-in-denver-explained-6517932 Should I try to disavow these and submit to google or will google know our site which has been up for 5 years is not doing this? Should I do any of these https://tehnoblog.org/google-webmaster-tools-my-website-got-bombed-with-backlinks-what-to-do/

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson
          0
        • andyheath

          Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google

          I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath
          0
        • spanish_socapro

          How to avoid Google penalties being inherited when moving on with a new domain?

          Looking for SEOs who have experience with resetting projects by migrating on to a new domain to shed either a manual or algorithmic penalty. My questions are: For algorithmic penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? For manual penalties, what is the best migration strategy to avoid inheriting any kind of baggage? 301, 302, establish no connection between the two sites? Any other input on these kind of reset projects is appreciated.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spanish_socapro
          0
        • howlusa

          A few questions on Google's Structured Data Markup Helper...

          I'm trying to go through my site and add microdata with the help of Google's Structured Data Markup Helper. I have a few questions that I have not been able to find an answer for. Here is the URL I am referring to: http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-chicago My company is a bar/club, with only 4 out of 13 locations serving food. Would you mark this up as a local business or a restaurant? It asks for "URL" above the ratings. Is this supposed to be the URL that ratings are on like Yelp or something? Or is it the URL for the page? Either way, neither of those URLs are on the page so I can't select them. If it is for Yelp should I link to it? How do I add reviews? Do they have to be on the page? If I make a group of days for Day of the Week for Opening hours, such as Mon-Thu, will that work out? I have events on this page. However, when I tried to do the markup for just the event it told me to use  itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Event" on the body tag of the page. That is just a small part of the page, I'm not sure why I would put the event tag on the whole body? Any other tips would be much appreciated. Thanks!

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | howlusa
          0
        • AnthonyHall

          Company name causing Google penalty?

          Hi all, Once of my clients has a keyword as part of their company name, and it seems like the website is being given a penalty in the keyword SERP because of the amount of websites linking back using the company name? Is there anything i can do to prevent/balance this out? Thanks, Anthony

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyHall
          0
        • debc

          Infinite Redirect Loop without trailing slash, please help

          I've been searching for an answer all day, I can't seem to figure this out. When I Fetch my blog as Google(http://www.mysite.com/blog) WITHOUT a trailing slash at the end, I get this error: The page seems to redirect to itself. This may result in an infinite redirect loop **HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently** When I Fetch my blog as Google WITH the trailing slash at the end(http://www.mysite.com/blog/), it is fine without errors. When I pull it up in a browser comes up fine both with and without the trailing slash. My .htaccess file in the root directory contains this: RewriteEngine On
          RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
          RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$
          RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L] My .htaccess file in the blog directory contains this: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
           RewriteBase /blog/
           RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^./index.php/. [NC]
           RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
          RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Do I have something incorrectly coded in these .htaccess files that could be causing this? Or is there something else I should look at? Thank you for any help!!

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | debc
          0
        • pulseseo

          Does Google crawl the pages which are generated via the site's search box queries?

          For example, if I search for an 'x' item in a site's search box and if the site displays a list of results based on the query, would that page be crawled? I am asking this question because this would be a URL that is non existent on the site and hence am confused as to whether Google bots would be able to find it.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pulseseo
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        • Digital Marketers
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.