Which SEO companies offer Penalty analysis?
-
I'm having a hard time finding a (good) SEO company which specializes itself in Penalty analysis? Any recommendations?
I only found Bruce Clay, but they charge 8,000$ :)...
-
Keep an eye on the cached version of the page - once it is updated you may see something straight away but I would tend to give it a couple of weeks after the page is crawled.
-
That seems like a good plan. In which timeframe should I expect results (if any)?
-
Hard to say but it smells like algorithmic filtering of sorts - they were picked up for some reason and are now downgraded.
My approach would be to do an experiment, pick one page, totally rewrite it, track it's progress against the other pages.
Always try to apply scientific rigour, change one variable, measure the results, use that information to steer further decisions or inspire further tests and experiments.
-
When I copied & pasted chunks of text in Google & Bing, I did notice that Google showed way more results then Bing. This could also indicate that Google is more tolerant to duplicate content in their index then Bing.
The links you checked were totally removed from the index on Bing a few weeks ago. They are now back in the index, but not (yet) in the top 50. What does that indicate?
-
Hey, not to say there are not other issues, but that is an obvious line of investigation and worth pursuing if only to tick it off the list - a real audit would dig a lot deeper!
As Dr. Marie said, it's an odd one to be Bing specific - that's what piqued my interest!
Good luck!
Marcus -
Hi Marie,
Thank you for the tip. I will definitely check if there aren't too many keywords on the page.
In the theory of Marcus, it could make sense that Google recognizes the original content, while Bing does not recognize us as the original content. Google places us on top, while Bing places us below. This indicates that Bing is using different metrics which are not in my benefit.
I also checked Bing WMT, but no messages.
-
This is an interesting question given that your ranking drop is happening in Bing and not Google. I think this is the first time I have ever heard anyone with that issue.
I don't have the answer for you, but I have one quick thought. Duane Foresster, head of Bing, mentioned a while back that they use keyword stuffing in the meta keywords tag as an indicator of spam. If you've got meta keywords tags in place I would remove them. It probably won't make a huge difference, but it can't hurt.
Also, have you checked your Bing WMT? There may be some clues in there as to what is going on.
-
Okay, quick look at three pages that have dropped from Bing.
If I take a chunk of text from the homepage and google it in double quotes I often find 50 or more pages with the same content. Not a good start but at least your page comes up first indicating that you are at least the owner / originator of the content.
If we do the same in Bing, I am finding your pages, but only after several others with the same content AND bing ranks other sites above your site indicating a problem.
What to do? Well, it depends. How did this content get onto all these other sites? Has it been pinched from your site? If so, you need a content audit and to find any other sites using your content and to ask them to take it down.
You could try some DMCA takedown requests but often, if this is an old site and you have been wildscale plundered I have found rewriting the content is often easier on your site.
As an example, I have a client I have worked with for 10 years or more. We set them up and they have been pretty much ruling the roost in their little niche for years and were the first site to really set up doing what they do we believe.
Well, long before panda or penguin they suddenly dropped out of search and I had a panicked phone call. A bit of digging found literally hundreds of sites all over the world that had copied content, also, some pretty much out and copies of the website (with not all links replaced as well so still pointing to some pages on the source site).
We tried to contact all these folks but in the end just used it as an excuse to freshen up the content and do a rewrite and it bounced back.
Now, not saying you don't have other problems, it was the quickest of quick looks but certainly, this is the direction I would go in.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
HI Marcus,
No, the pages are 2 to 6 years old.
I will send you a PM with the link now.
Thank you.
-
Hmm, interesting, so are these new pages that rank well and then drop out of search? Again, near impossible to provide any more feedback without a link but feel free to fire me a PM or email and I will feedback here (keeping your anonymity intact)
-
Thank you Tom and Marcus, for your responses. It was really helpful. I value it highly.
Just to be clear, the penalty is on page-level and only on Bing. Weekly I see 1 or 2 pages from my website removed from the index on Bing (page 1 or 2 ranking before). I use the weekly ranking report of Seomoz as an indicator. This has been happening since January. When I go to Bing I indeed can't find the pages that lost the ranking according to Seomoz. They seem totally removed from the search index. Also no messages in Bing Webmaster tools.
I have no idea what is triggering this page-level penalty. So I'm looking for an expert on this matter.
I prefer not to share my website openly.
-
Hey
We specialise in SEO Audits which can cover a range or problems (including penalty analysis) but it can also be something that you can do on your own. Certainly, there is a lot of moving parts and it depends on the complexity of the site, the history and a number of other variables.
So, for starters, can you provide a URL for some feedback? Additionally, can you provide any other details?
- History
- Platform (CMS : WordPress, Magento etc)
- Problems including dates and any additional information
As a starting point that should enable you to get some feedback from the community and the problem may be quite apparent and tied to known dates with algorithm updates.
First up take a look at your analytics and then compare any obvious drops to this:
http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-changeThen, if you find a date that tallies up, take a look at your traffic for two weesk before and after the drop. Check out search terms, landing pages and anything else important to see what was most effected and build a list of terms and pages to start your further analysis.
Then, with http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ you can examine these individual pages and anchor text terms and look for obvious patterns and problems with external elements.
If, it is more of a panda type penalty then you can use services like copyscape to get an idea of what is going on from a duplicate content perspective.
Ultimately, there are so many permutations and possibilities that without a URL and some more info it's near impossible for anyone to give you any more targeted feedback.
Certainly though, if you would like someone to take a look, give me a shout and I can at least give you some quick feedback. Other folks of note from this forum are Ryan from Vitopian and Dr. Marie who are both well versed with penalties and good, honest folks.
Hope that helps
Marcus
-
I imagine quite a few would, even if they do not explicitly mention. If you find a company or agency that you like the look of, it's always worth dropping them a message to see if they would do this service for you.
On that note, have a look at SEOMoz's recommended company list and see if any of those companies offer what you're looking for, or if they have expertise and/or a portfolio with companies in your industry - that's always a good sign.
If you'd like to go down the route of self-diagnosis, I'd highly recommend the Panguin tool and MyTrafficDropped.com. Both are great diagnosis and analysis tools, while also providing you with actionable advice. MyTrafficDropped also provides consultancy for penalty removal.
Hope these links help!
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
-
Effect of same country server hosting on SEO
Hello all, my question is if my website targets a country abc and I have server in the same country abc compared to suppose I shift my server to country xyz can it effect SEO and ranking of my website ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adnan11010 -
SEO results hacked?
Hi there, Since last Saturday I noticed a big traffic drop on at least the following two pages:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarcelMoz
http://www.smartphonehoesjes.nl/apple/ and http://www.smartphonehoesjes.nl/apple/iphone-6/. I did some research and I noticed something realy strange. Unknown sites seems to hijacked my organic results by using the exact same page title and META description but leading traffic to another their domain. Look at those pictures: http://imgur.com/v6kglLU and http://imgur.com/Whx4l8K. Edit: a competitor seems to have a same problem: http://imgur.com/Zzhter4. I just fetched both URL's in GWT as Google. In Bing there is a little sign of this problem too, so this is not a Google only thing. Can anybody please help me here? This has cost me some real money since Saturday. Tnx in advance. Marcel0 -
Recovering from Black Hat/Negative SEO with a twist
Hey everyone, This is a first for me, I'm wondering if anyone has experienced a similar situation and if so, what the best course of action was for you. Scenario In the process of designing a new site for a client, we discovered that his previous site, although having decent page rank and traffic had been hacked. The site was built on Wordpress so it's likely there was a vulnerability somewhere that allowed someone to create loads of dynamic pages; www.domain.com/?id=102, ?id=103, ?id=104 and so on. These dynamic pages ended up being malware with a trojan horse our servers recognized and subsequently blocked access to. We have since helped them remedy the vulnerability and remove the malware that was creating these crappy dynamic pages. Another automated program appears to have been recently blasting spam links (mostly comment spam and directory links) to these dynamically created pages at an incredibly rapid rate, and is still actively doing so. Right now we're looking at a small business website with a touch over 500k low-quality spammy links pointing to malware pages from the previously compromised site. Important: As of right now, there's been no manual penalty on the site, nor has a "This Site May Have Been Compromised" marker in the organic search results for the site. We were able to discover this before things got too bad for them. Next Steps? The concern is that when the Penguin refresh occurs, Google is going to notice all these garbage links pointing to those malware pages and then potentially slap a penalty on the site. The main questions I have are: Should we report this proactively to the web spam team using the guidelines here? (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1) Should we request a malware review as recommended within the same guidelines, keeping in mind the site hasn't been given a 'hacked' snippet in the search results? (https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/4598410?hl=en&ref_topic=4596795) Is submitting a massive disavow links file right now, including the 490k-something domains, the only way we can escape the wrath of Google when these links are discovered? Is it too hopeful to imagine their algorithm will detect the negative-SEO nature of these links and not give them any credit? Would love some input or examples from anyone who can help, thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Etna0 -
Companies creating spammy links to charge money to delete them?
Hi all, Yesterday I was checking out ahrefs.com and realizing that one of our main competitors was getting new spammy links to its website from junk directories, rusian forums, porn sites etc. I found it to be weird but I thought that maybe they hired a black hat company without knowing it. Today I began finding the same type of spammy links pointing to our site. I'm completely sure we did not create them.I was checking out some of the new directory links and their listings consist of new pages including only our company's website and absolutely no descriptions. I did a little more research and find out that many of those new directories/listings belong to the same company ( seems to be located in Argentina, but I'm not sure). I also remembered paying that company long time ago to delete two links to our website that were included in their directories. I have to tell you, I'm completely out of my mind and I really don't know what to do. The two possibilities I can think about are: 1- A competitor has hired somebody to point spam to our site, to our other competitor, and may be some other competitors in the industry.(because as I tell you before our main competitor in the area is getting new spammy links too) 2- These black hat companies that own directories and other junk websites are pointing spam to us to get paid to remove links. Whether is #1 or #2 is getting out of control and I really don't know how to manage it (except from disvowing links as soon as I find them). I would appreciate suggestions/advise. Thanks. Ana
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anagentile0 -
Re-Post: Unanswered - Loss of rankings due to hack. No manual penalty. Please advise.
Sorry for reposting, but i must have accidentally marked this as answered. I am still seeking advice/solutions. I have a client who's site was hacked. The hack added a fake directory to the site, and generated thousands of links to a page that no longer exists. We fixed the hack and the site is fully protected. We disavowed all the malicious/fake links, but the rankings fell off a cliff (they lost top 50 Google rankings for most of their targeted terms). There is no manual penalty set, but it has been 6 weeks and their rankings have not returned. In webmaster tools, their priority #1 "Not found" page is the fake page that no longer exists. Is there anything else we can do? We are out of answers and the rankings haven't even come back at all. Any advise would be helpful. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | digitalimpulse0 -
Recovering from Pinguin Penalty
We have big issue with a website who has been hardly penalized by Pinguin on october 4th. After a lot of try to remove bad links and sending two disavow files, none of our actions has improved our situation. We're wondering if this solution might be good : changing the domaine name Keeping the same content Not using Webmaster tools and redirect 301 and wait until the site will be fully indexed Build new links Please tell us your opinion and solution. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | webit400 -
Looking for recent bad SEO / black hat example such as JC Penney example from 2011
I am giving a presentation in a few weeks and looking for a "what not to do" larger brand example that made poor SEO choices to try and game Google with black hat tactics. Any examples you can point me to?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
Interesting case of IP-wide Google Penalty, what is the most likely cause?
Dear SEOMOZ Community, Our portfolio of around 15 internationalized web pages has received a significant, as it seems IP-wide, Google penalty starting November 2010 and have yet to recover from it. We have undergone many measure to lift the penalty including reconsideration requests wo/ luck and am now hoping the SEOMoz community can give us some further tips. We are very interested in the community's help and judgement what else we can try to uplift the penalty. As quick background information, The sites in question offers sports results data and is translated for several languages. Each market, equals language, has its own tld domain using the central keyword, e.g. <keyword_spanish>.es <keyword_german>.de <keyword_us>.com</keyword_us></keyword_german></keyword_spanish> The content is highly targeted around the market, which means there are no duplicate content pages across the domains, all copy is translated, content reprioritized etc. however the core results content in the body of the pages obviously needs to stay to 80% the same A SEO agency of ours has been using semi-automated LinkBuilding tools in mid of 2010 to acquire link partnerships There are some promotional one-way links to sports-betting and casino positioned on the page The external linking structure of the pages is very keyword and main-page focused, i.e. 90% of the external links link to the front page with one particular keyword All sites have a strong domain authority and have been running under the same owner for over 5 years As mentioned, we have experienced dramatic ranking losses across all our properties starting in November 2010. The applied penalties are indisputable given that rankings dropped for the main keywords in local Google search engines from position 3 to position 350 after the sites have been ranked in the top 10 for over 5 years. A screenshot of the ranking history for one particular domain is attached. The same behavior can be observed across domains. Our questions are: Is there something like an IP specific Google penalty that can apply to web properties across an IP or can we assume Google just picked all pages registered at Google Webmaster? What is the most likely cause for our penalty given the background information? Given the drops started already in November 2010 we doubt that the Panda updates had any correlation t this issue? What are the best ways to resolve our issues at this point? We have significant history data available such as tracking records etc. Our actions so far were reducing external links, on page links, and C-class internal links Are there any other factors/metrics we should look at to help troubleshooting the penalties? After all this time wo/ resolution, should we be moving on two new domains and forwarding all content as 301s to the new pages? Are the things we need to try first? Any help is greatly appreciated. SEOMoz rocks. /T cxK29.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tomypro0