Remove Google penalty or make a new website, Which is better??
-
My local website was hit by google and I have done all steps to remove the penalty, But it's still not ranked.
So it is better to make a new website with new content and start working on it?
-
In many cases, it is easier to start over than to clean up. But, no one can really answer your question without knowing a lot more facts.
In general though, I would recommend attempting recovery if either of the following are true for your site:
-You have a good base of truly natural links to your site
-You have a lot invested in your domain name.
But, if you're not married to the domain name and there aren't many natural links then starting fresh might be the best option.
-
Google states that it will likely take 6 months to a year (but can take longer) to see a recovery once a revoke is issued for a manual penalty if it is related to a Penguin Algo issue.
You must wait for a refresh of Penguin to run, but if it runs too soon after your revoke and Google has not finished reorganizing your disavowed and removed links then you will have to wait for the next update. Currently on 2 a year and the next will likely be in april/may
-
One reason you may be getting different answers is that a good evaluation of your situation may actually take several hours to dig in and find out what is going on, the cause(s) of the problem, ideas for solutions, etc. This may be a case where it would be good to contact an expert (we have a recommended list you can find in the footer) and ask for some help. You don't necessarily need to hire them to do all of the cleanup work for you, but it'd be a great place to start from in having confidence to know what to do.
-
If you know it is backlinks then you should only need to cleanse your profile. Manual - submit a reconsideration request; algorithmic - wait for an update.
If you do use a new domain you have no age, no authority and ranking will take time. Being local you have to ensure every source that contains NAP is updated with the new domain as you cannot redirect if you suspect there is any infection within the existing profile.
All I am saying is that I don't know your domain or scenario, but just ditching to a new domain may give you more headaches than you envisage and should definitely not be a knee jerk reaction to a slow recovery.
Then as mentioned there is a trust thing with your visitors changing domain, especially if it is branded. If you do go down that road I would get some business objective information out there as to why the change in name (on the site, social etc).
-
Here I am getting different opinions on “what to do”.
I know my current website was hit because of low quality backlinks, which I can avoid in the new website.
Can I start a new website with the same business name (with different URLs), with same address and phone number?.
-
The simple answer is we cannot give you confident advice. We don't know what the penalty/ies were, or if they are manual or algorithmic - do they tie up to any particular dates. Then that is only the start of real identification.
Does the domain have authority, age and an element of good link profile?
Does the domain have on-site technical issues hampering recovery?
My take on the question is that if you do not know precisely what the problem is then starting a new domain there is every reason to suppose you may fall down the same hole again. If you do know precisely the problem then fix it and wait, build out new content, create excellent links back to the site.
-
Hello,
Simply I will recommend you to focus on New Website. It takes less effort to Rank then to get back your website after penalty.
Thanks
-
Once the website is out of the penalty it usually takes time to come back to its original rakings and in my experience, it’s a slow process. Changing a brand name and start with the new website and content is again a time taking job and it’s not really simple decide one and go with it!
In my opinion, you have to consider several things in mind before taking any decision.
- How will your audience react to the website if they are going to find the same venders with the different names?
- What is the guarantee that your new website will not come under the Google Penguin/Panda radar?
If I will be at your place, I would consider the real problem and I think the real problem I see with your website is that you have one channel to get new customers and that was search engine. If this is the case than you should stick with the same website and try to diversify online channels to attract new customers, you can use content marketing as a channel, QnA forums as a channel, Youtube as a channel and more.
Instead of going with the new website instantly, try to find out the root problem and solve it accordingly.
Hope this helps!
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
-
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
Mass Removal Request from Google Index
Hi, I am trying to cleanse a news website. When this website was first made, the people that set it up copied all kinds of articles they had as a newspaper, including tests, internal communication, and drafts. This site has lots of junk, but this kind of junk was on the initial backup, aka before 1st-June-2012. So, removing all mixed content prior to that date, we can have pure articles starting June 1st, 2012! Therefore My dynamic sitemap now contains only articles with release date between 1st-June-2012 and now Any article that has release date prior to 1st-June-2012 returns a custom 404 page with "noindex" metatag, instead of the actual content of the article. The question is how I can remove from the google index all this junk as fast as possible that is not on the site anymore, but still appears in google results? I know that for individual URLs I need to request removal from this link
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ioannisa
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals The problem is doing this in bulk, as there are tens of thousands of URLs I want to remove. Should I put the articles back to the sitemap so the search engines crawl the sitemap and see all the 404? I believe this is very wrong. As far as I know this will cause problems because search engines will try to access non existent content that is declared as existent by the sitemap, and return errors on the webmasters tools. Should I submit a DELETED ITEMS SITEMAP using the <expires>tag? I think this is for custom search engines only, and not for the generic google search engine.
https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/indexing#on-demand-indexing</expires> The site unfortunatelly doesn't use any kind of "folder" hierarchy in its URLs, but instead the ugly GET params, and a kind of folder based pattern is impossible since all articles (removed junk and actual articles) are of the form:
http://www.example.com/docid=123456 So, how can I bulk remove from the google index all the junk... relatively fast?0 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
NEW WEBSITE WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO RECOVERY THE AUTHORITY OF OLD DOMAIN NAME?
HOW TO DO RECOVERY AUTHORITY OF OLD DOMAIN NAME? I got some advise on this in another post here on MOZ based on this i need a few answers TO SUMMERIZE**:****.** My client got some REALLY bad advice when they got their new website. So they ended up changing the domain name and just redirecting everything from the old domain and old website to the front page of the new domain and new website. As the new domain not optimized for SEO they of cause now are not ranking on anything in Google anymore. QUESTION 1 According to my client, they use to rank well on keywords for the old domain and get a lot of organic traffic. They don’t have access to their old google analytics account, and don’t have any reports on their rankings. Can anyone suggestions how I can find out what keywords they were ranking on? QUESTION 2 I will change the domain name back to the old domnain name (the client actually prefer the old domain name) But how to get back most possible page authority: For information titles, descriptions, content has all been rewritten. A - Redirect I will try to match the old urls with the new ones. B - Recreate site structure Make the URL structure of the new website look like the old URL structure Etc. the old structure use to be like olddomain.com/our-destinations/cambadia.html (old) newdomain.com/destinations/Cambodia (new) Or olddomain.com/private-tours.html (old) newdomain.com/tailor-made (new) does the html in the old urls need any attention when recreating the permalinks in the new websites. Look forward to hear your thoughts on this, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Link Removal Request Sent to Google, Bad Pages Gone from Index But Still Appear in Webmaster Tools
| On June 14th the number of indexed pages for our website on Google Webmaster tools increased from 676 to 851 pages. Our ranking and traffic have taken a big hit since then. The increase in indexed pages is linked to a design upgrade of our website. The upgrade was made June 6th. No new URLS were added. A few forms were changed, the sidebar and header were redesigned. Also, Google Tag Manager was added to the site. My SEO provider, a reputable firm endorsed by MOZ, believes the extra 175 pages indexed by Google, pages that do not offer much content, may be causing the ranking decline. My developer submitted a page removal request to Google via Webmaster tools around June 20th. Now when a Google search is done for site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com 851 results display. Would these extra pages cause a drop in ranking? My developer issued a link removal request for these pages around June 20th and the number in the Google search results appeared to drop to 451 for a few days, now it is back up to 851. In Google Webmaster Tools it is still listed as 851 pages. My ranking drop more and more everyday. At the end of displayed Google Search Results for site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.comvery strange URSL are displaying like:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/wp-content/plugins/... If we can get rid of these issues should ranking return to what it was before?I suspect this is an issue with sitemaps and Robot text. Are there any firms or coders who specialize in this? My developer has really dropped the ball. Thanks everyone!! Alan |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
New domain or wait - Anchor Text Penalty
Hi We are confident we have an anchor text penalty and have removed nearly all offending links about 3 months ago, and since have only engaged on 100% natural linking with good content and simply asking people to share our site. However we have made no progress all in terms on position for our main keyword - we now thinking of starting a fresh on a new domain as Google doesn't seem to be able to forgive us... Any ideas please?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Ecommerce: Add new range to current website or Create a new one
Hello, I run a website called easywatering.co.uk. We rank well for keywords in our industry in the UK selling Garden Irrigation. This is very much a summer business. My directors are saying that they want to start selling winter products (that have no relevancy for the keywords we target). They also want to keep costs down by using easywatering.co.uk to sell this new product line. If we do start targeting for new keywords that are out of our current industry, do you think that we would dilute the current content and therefore reduce our relevancy for the keywords? Or do you think that we would be fine to start targeting for new keywords in a different industry sector?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanLade0 -
How to remove an entire subdomain from the Google index with URL removal tool?
Does anyone have clear instructions for how to do this? Do we need to set up a separate GWT account for each subdomain? I've tried using the URL removal tool, but it will only allow me to remove URLs indexed under my domain (i.e. domain.com not subdomain.domain.com) Any help would be much appreciated!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0