Recovering from Google Penguin/algorithm penalty?
-
Anyone think recovery is possible?
My site has been in Google limbo for the past 8 months to around a year or so. Like a lot of sites we had seo work done a while sgo and had tons of links that Google now looks down on.
I worked with an seo company for a few months now and they seem to agree Penguin is the likely culprit, we are on page 8-10 for keywords that we used to be on page 1 for. Our site is informative and has everything in tact.
We deleted whatever links possible and some sites are even hard to find contact information for and some sites want money, I paid a few a couple bucks in hopes maybe it could help the process.
Anyway we now have around 600 something domains on disavow file we out up in March-April, with around 100 or 200 added recently as well. If need be a new site could be an option as well but will wait and see if the site can improve on Google with a refresh.
Anyone think recovery is possible in a situation like this?
Thanks
-
Thanks. I'm hoping the next Penguin refresh shows improvement. The consensus seems to be that to recover from a Penguin penalty is a matter of the refresh happens to see any changes.
-
Yeah, on page seo wise I think we are good. My site blogs regularly about the niche area it's in and news related to it, also try to make it interesting, but yes seo wise I think it passes all the tests too - someone from Google's forums checked it out and thought it looked good seo wise as well as a online marketing company I just worked with that was trying to help my site out of any penalties. They also ran some checks on competitors websites and their online tactics, etc.
Some of the top rankings in our keyword is actually sites like Amazon and Office Depot - which might be a common trend now anyways.
For links the seo company did an analysis and I also added whatever I found that looked like shady directories or anchor text heavy links. I also checked out websites or ranks and if they came on Google's searches when typing their name. Anything questionable I disavowed as it seems now better safe than sorry with backlinks.
-
Thanks for those links. I'm gonna take a look through them. I also thought about being followed by the penalty I guess it makes sense since technically Google may notice a site from the same ip and google accounts being linked between a new and old site, etc. I guess basically if a penalty can be overcome that would be the ideal situation.
-
Hi King,
there is no direct "yes that's normal and easy to fix" as each case is different.
You also do not need to wait for the next run in order to start fixing a site from a penalty. There is a lot of litriture about Moz of recovery from penguin etc. if you do a search.
Not that I put much faith in it but there are also "link detox" software's that can help but be careful with them as its very easy to disavow good links etc. its only an algorithm after all.
Side-note: I thought there might of been a refresh/update end of last week as there was a lot of movement and John Mueller hinted its coming soon in a recent video.
thanks
-
You guys couldn't just give him the direct answer he's looking for?
OP, recovery from Penguin is possible, but you need to wait until the Penguin algorithm is run again. In 2012 and 2013 it was run multiple times, but it has not been run in 2014. It was last run in October 2013. So keep your fingers crossed for a refresh and hope it improves your rankings. If you've done as much as you could to remove links and done a proper disavow file, you should come out looking better.
-
Something to remember with Google and backlinks: changes take time, sometimes months.
Recovery is possible, and I am sorry you are feeling desperate in your situation. The fact is you are doing the right thing by looking into the links of your site and getting rid of any ugly linking domains.
Outside of links, have you compared your seo (on and off page) to the top ranking sites in your industry? A lot of people say that their website is informative and has well done seo, but usually that is because they are so close to their own site to see any errors. (can't see the forest for the trees) Informative doesn't necessarily mean well-optimized.
I would do a competitive analysis along with your link removals. What I would not do is sit back idly by while waiting for Google to put your changes into effect. Be proactive while you wait, and when they do come around and see you have made positive changes in all areas of your site you might get your old ranking back.
Question: what methods did you use to determine what links were bad or harmful?
-
Recovery is always possible. Remember starting a new site is hard and Google have paid it is possible for a penalty to follow you so might as well fix it now. You shouldn't ever have to pay for a link removal if you do just add it to your disavow list no problem.
There are loads of goodl resources on moz take a look through Q&A e.g
http://moz.com/community/q/google-panda-and-penguin-recovery
There are also some great blog posts too e.g
http://moz.com/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
Also a shout out to Marie Haynes (she has some great knowledge on the subject too!)
I know its depressing but keep at it there is a light at the end of the tunnel, one last bit of advice whilst you are removing links don't forget that you also need to replenish the link juice afterwards as you will have a dip so have a strategy ready.
Good luck
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
-
What does Google's Spammy Structured Markup Penalty consist of?
Hey everybody,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | klaver
I'm confused about the Spammy Structured Markup Penalty: "This site may not perform as well in Google results because it appears to be in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines." Does this mean the rich elements are simply removed from the snippets? Or will there be an actual drop in rankings? Can someone here tell from experience? Thanks for your help!1 -
"Google chose different canonical than user" Issue Can Anyone help?
Our site https://www.travelyaari.com/ , some page are showing this error ("Google chose different canonical than user") on google webmasters. status message "Excluded from search results". Affected on our route page urls mainly. https://www.travelyaari.com/popular-routes-listing Our canonical tags are fine, rel alternate tags are fine. Can anyone help us regarding why it is happening?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Mobile Redirect - Cloaking/Sneaky?
Question since Google is somewhat vague on what they consider mobile "equivalent" content. This is the hand we're dealt with due to budget, no m.dot, etc, responsive/dynamic is on the roadmap but still a couple quarters away but, for now, here's the situation. We have two sets of content and experiences, one for desktop and one for mobile. The problem is that desktop content does not = mobile content. The layout, user experience, images and copy aren't the same across both versions - they are not dramatically different but not identical. In many cases, no mobile equivalent exists. Dev wants to redirect visitors who find the desktop version in mobile search to the equivalent mobile experience, when it exists, when it doesn't they want to redirect to the mobile homepage - which really isn't a homepage it's an unfiltered view of the content. Yeah we have push state in place for the mobile version etc. My concern is that Google will look at this as cloaking, maybe not in the cases where there's a near equivalent piece of content, but definitely when we're redirecting to the "homepage". Not to mention this isn't a great user experience and will impact conversion/engagement metrics which are likely factors Google's algorithm considers. What's the MOZ Community say about this? Cloaking or Not and Why? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jose_R0 -
70% organic traffic drop in October?! Algorithm change?
I oversee content for a client and this past month there was a 70% decrease in traffic. We noticed the hit start on September 29th, and has never rebounded. Any suggestions what this could be (i..e latest Google algorithm update) and or tools I should use to look into it? Nothing is showing up as an alert on Moz analytics and need to address with my client asap.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
My site www.sriindustries.com dropped to back page penguin 2.1
My website penguin 2.1 dropped back to page 5 and beyond, can you help me to come out from this ? My head is breaking, also I would like to know how to be on top for local business search (maps)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | synchronyinfo0 -
How do I prepare my store for Penguin 2.0?
Looking for advice from someone who has been keeping up on the updates from Matt Cutts, other sources on what to work on for my web store to prevent getting hit hard by the upcoming penguin update.Practical advice on what to clean up on the site would be extremely useful. Watched a Matt Cutts video yesterday getting a preview...I'm very curious about the part saying that Google will show preference to those who are "Experts in their Fields." What makes you qualified for this? We are in the wicker furniture industry and have been a local brick and mortar store since 1982. We started our website about 1998, so I would consider that experience possibly part of the equation. On the other hand, I know everyone would love to say they are the experts in their niche, so it would be nice to know what needs to be done to achieve this. Thank you in advance for any help, Mark Grabowski Wicker Paradise xQmQeKU25zg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Preparing for Penguin: Delete or Change to Branding 25 small blogs, anchor text
Hello, This site has 80 root domains pointing to the domain, call it site X. 25 of them are tiny blogs the owner put up himself. The blogs consist only of 4 posts or so, where each post has a 2 keyword anchor text links to each one of his 4 sites. One link in each post goes to the home page and one goes to an internal page. Let's concern ourselves with cleaning up the anchor text profile of site X. All blogs are on private registration. Half of the blog domain names are furniture related and furniture is not relevant to this niche. But 3/4 to 3/5 of the content of each blog (2 paragraphs per post and 4 posts) is relevant. My concern is that even though the anchor text is varied and there's only 2 links going out to site X per blog, none of it is branded and so I'm concerned about Penguin type updates. Should we change these to branded or delete them? We're working on content promotion for backlinks in case we have to delete these blogs, but it's a small budget. What should we do? '
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
My website disapeared from google rankings, please help?
Our website url is http://www.phoria.com Around January 16th we disappeared from google for the keyword 'kratom' We were on page 3 for the longest time. We have no critical messages in webmaster tools however I did notice most of our links seem to be website directory links.We still rank for a couple terms like buy kratom on page 6.I think a google update occurred around this time so I've read however if we had a variety of links that went against google guidelines wouldn't we have received a message stating so in Webmaster Tools?This month has been very confusing to say the least. Any help would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gregdotcom0