Google Penalty Investigation
-
Hi All,
I've recently had a google penalty, and have spent a long while working through tying up any loose ends with my site (I'm building a new one, so you'll still see some probs on my current one).
My search referrals do slowly seem to be recovering, but only for variations of terms that are similar to 'bike repair'. Now, my site does primarily offer bike repair advice, so that's a good thing, but I'm not yet ranking for any of my specific keywords. One example is that I used to rank quite high for the term 'schrader valve'.
Is this a signal of anything in particular? Or can I not read anything specific into this?
Thanks!
-
Hey,
The obvious points seem to have been covered already:
-
no correlation with traffic drops on known algorithm change dates
-
no manual penalty
Can you provide a little more info so we can dig into this?
- A link to your site
- An example of a page (or pages) that won't rank for a given term
There are a lot of moving parts here and you could be the victim of sites that linked to you being deindexed or penalised, of some kind of phrase specific drop but without more data we are simply guessing here.
I would do the following:
1. Dig into your analytics and take a look at the drop date. Compare this to the algorithm dates here on SEOMoz or use the super cool panguintool.com to see all updates and algorithm changes overlaid over your anlaytics.
2. Taking anything gleaned from the above review the traffic drop in your analytics. Look at the period two weeks before and after the drop (you indicated it was sudden?) - look at the landing pages, the keywords, what are the big changes? This again gives you more intel to further your investigation. Is the entire drop tied into a couple of keywords that are now performing more poorly.
3. Audit your site - how is the accessibility? How well is it indexed? Is there duplication? Other technical problems? There is a good self audit post on here that will get you started: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit
4. Audit your back links - where have they come from? What are they like? Editorial? Directories? Are the linking sites indexed or do they appear to have been penalised? Use some of the tools out there like Link Detective and Link Detox from Link Research Tools to give you some more intel.
There will a reason for this but without a link it is impossible to give anything other than general advice. If the link is sensitive fire me a PM. I will still feedback here in the public forum for all to benefit but I will maintain your anonymity if that's important.
If you can drop a link, you will benefit from several SEO super sleuths taking a look so I would always recommend that.
Anyhow, I hope that helps!
Marcus
-
-
If there's no message, then you should look at your links (find over optimisation problems) and onpage (duplicates, canonical problems, engagement, 404's) and the exact date when traffic started to drop
There's really not much for your to look at beside those.
1. Identify the date = correlate with past penalty dates. If it's recently (with all the serp changes happening since 2 weeks ago) then you probably got hit by a panda.
2. Fix your onpage first and get it out of the way. Fix every suggestion in webmaster tools.
3. Dig through your link anchors then grab all the links that point to that anchor. Gauge if they are quality links, if most of them aren't, then you better start adding URL only quality links
4. Time. All you can do is wait for it to recover. All the while, you should be building other sources of traffic and probably start another site just for backup.
-
Hi Michael, thanks for your reply.
Not quite right on both counts actually. I didn't get a message in WMT and my sudden drop in referrals doesn't coincide with an algorithm change. I think this means it's quite likely the problem is not to do with my links? Could be wrong though, I don't really know what I'm talking about.
I think it's an on-page optimisation issue, although if my drop happened suddenly could that still be the case? My html is a bit of a mess- there were some broken links in the footer to my disclaimer etc and had a ton of internal links pointed at 301's plus some unintentional hidden text etc (hence the site rebuild).
I was slowly starting to rank better and better for a whole load of specific keywords, surely all my links didn't take a hit?
-
The short answer is yes, but there are some caveats.
It depends on what you mean by the word "penalty". If you had a manual penalty (Google sent you a message through Google Webmaster Tools), then the best answer is usually to remove the offensive links, submit a reconsideration request, and replace those links with good ones. If, on the other hand, you had a drastic drop in rank due to an algorithm update, removing links will do nothing for you. Based on what you're saying (and correct me if I'm wrong), this sounds like what is happening with you.
In that scenario, the links that got you the ranking for "schrader valve" were most likely devalued and don't count against you. They're just not helping you anymore either. Your time would be best invested into earning stronger links.
Let me know if I misunderstood your question...
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
-
Why Google de-rank a website.
Hi, I was inspecting a website which is covering the topic of best wheelbarrow of 2021, it is a new website and and starts ranking on google. But, after few days it got de-rank automatically and Moz is also not showing any result to that. I was wandering why this just happened and what should I do if I made my website and will not face this kind of situation?
Technical SEO | | Moeen22330 -
Slowly recovering from algorithm penalty
Hi , over the years a website we took over was hit by an algorithm penalty (a combination of penguin and panda). We managed to bring rankings back (after 6 months) from page 5/6 to page 2 after we used the google disavow tool. now for the past 9 months we have been stuck on page 2.. is there anything you think can be done to bring it back to page 1? we are building quality links now and moved away from low quality links other link builders were making. We are managing the process much closer and ensuring we maintain good standards of links. also making the pages flatter and merging short page content to larger content pages now we are looking at site structure and creating structured internal link flow is there anything we should be aware of and any recommendations to get back on page 1.. this is a tailor-made travel related website with a small selection of destinations
Technical SEO | | Direct_Ram0 -
How do I get out of google bomb?
Hi all, I have a website named bijouxroom.com; and I was in the 7th page for the search term takı in google; and 2nd page for online takı. Now, I see that in one day my results seem to be on the 13th and 10th page in google respectively. I made too much anchor text for takı and online takı. What shall I do to gain my positions back? Thanks in advance. Regards,
Technical SEO | | ozererim0 -
Google Rejects Merchant Feed
Buon Giorno fromn 1 degrees C nearly dark & icy wetherby Uk... WTF Googles merchant centre has rejected my feed and In the time honoured zero customer service Ive grown accustomed to getting from Santa Clara County ive got bugger all idea how to fix it. Here is the feed:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://ramsdensforcash.co.uk/sitefiles/handlers/googlemerchantdatafeed.ashx And here is the violation from the Google Gods themselves: http://ramsdensforcash.co.uk/sitefiles/handlers/googlemerchantdatafeed.ashx Anyone got any ideas why Google has given me the middle finger? Greazie tanto,
David0 -
Ads above the fold penalty. Should I request reinclusion?
HI! My site has been losing traffic slowly for about 18 months. But it was in January 19 that was hit big time. My site has a lot of ads, including two 300x250 above the fold ads that were very lucrative for me. After January 19, I decided to remove only one ad of those two, but no change was reflected in the traffic. It is obvious that I needed to remove the other ad, but I didn't do it for two reasons. I still earn money from that ad and removing it would result in serious problems. A webmaster friend of mine that was hit too by this penalty, removed the ads and tried all sort of stuff to regain the lost traffic with NO LUCK in several months. He has unique and excellent content. So, after seeing his experience I didn't want to touch my biggest source of income and leave it as it is. My site has other problems that concerns Panda and maybe Penguin, and since yesterday I've been starting to fix them. Is it a good idea to request a reinclusion to check if I was manually penalized, without being previously notified by GWMT of any problem in my site? Thanks in advance, Enrique
Technical SEO | | enriquef0 -
Google plus
" With a single Google search, you can see regular search results, along with all sorts of results that are tailored to you -- pages shared with you by your friends, Google+ posts from people you know" Would i be able to see my own post which i shared with someone in my Google plus circle, when i do a search ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Is this against google rules
Hi i am wanting to know if this is against google rules. I am building a website which will have lots of different sections and i wanted to know if you were allowed to have a new domain name pointing to a section of the site. so for example if i had a site with a domain name of manchester and then i wanted a section of the site to be called www.manchester.com/complimentary health I want to know if to help with traffic to the site and to have a better domain name, if it was allowed to have a new domain name pointing to that section of the site which could be called www.complimentaryhealth.com and have that pointing to the section. would love to hear your thoughts on this
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Google Quality Algorithm Update
I'm curious what correlations or impacting variables SEO professionals have found that have increased or decreased ranking with the most recent algorithm change. It appears that many innocent sites have fallen victim, especially larger sites. It also appears that Google is maintaining that specific sites were not targeted... Meaning there must be proven characteristics.
Technical SEO | | douglaskarr0