Site Has Not Recovered (Still!) from Penguin
-
Hello,
I have a site that just keeps getting hit with a ton of bad, unnatural backlinks due to the sins from previous SEO companies they've hired. About every quarter, I have to add more bad links to their disavow file... still. Is it time to move them to a new domain? Perhaps a .net? If so, do we just completely trash the old domain & not redirect it? I've never had a client like this in the past but they still want to maintain their branded name.
Thanks for your feedback!
-
hey guys,
Any updates on the ahreflang tests?
I'm in a similar boat - one site got a manual hit in Feb2014...sitewide penalty, at one point brand name was even deindexed.
Got penalty lifted in 5 months. But traffic has not recovered one bit since then.
-
Please keep me posted what you decide to you. As awful as this is, it is nice to know we are not alone. We may just be rebranding and starting from scratch since Google has not provided any indication when they will release the next update. Also, I came across this a couple of weeks ago so it could be several months: http://searchengineland.com/google-we-are-working-on-making-the-penguin-updated-continuously-222247.
-
no need, all hreflang sites are linked in the eyes of Google. Also you still want people going to your original url which is where all your brand building and everything else was done.
At some point Penguin will refresh and your original site will regain the ability to rank. At that point you can decide what you want to do.
I had set mine up so that my co.uk was set to "EN" this capturred all english enquiries. Then in OCT 2014 my site regained its ability to rank and So I switched it so that my co.uk was set to "en-gb". The co.uk extension is an additional signal in google.co.uk for ranking and we are a truly global company with plans to expand into dedicated sites for certain countries. So it was a welcomed find.
However there is no harm in setting up the second site to target your main audience.
Lets say you are a company in the United States with a .com that is waiting for a penguin refresh.Get a second domain, point it to the same directory on your server. Do some clever coding to manage it so that you only have one set of code. (also think of a plan for the future to deliver separate content to both sites, maybe two database tables serving up content based on TLD).
Lets say you get a .netThen apply the following
Do this for each page making sure to keep the same url structure. (John mueller just started the importance of maintaining the same URL structure)
Once your original site regains the ability to rank again from an algo refresh go into webmaster tools and set the region of the new site to your desired specific location such as United States.
Then change the hreflang to:This way you are now telling Google to send only english searches from the US to your site and it will be a localized domain with a higher chance of ranking than the original site.
OR you could at that point remove hreflang and drop the newsite.net
This is the only way I was able to KEEP my original site up maintain my brand and all the people that go direct to my main brand website and also have a way of ranking again.
Its complicated to explain WHY it works but at some point I will write a big article for MOZ on this subject.
Hope that makes things more clear.
-
Yes the domain does not matter.
You can even test it out with just one single page. I spoke to John Mueller about this a while ago, he said when using hreflang you can use it in the same way you use a canonical tag. So maybe you could test it on an internal page that you know should be ranking better than it currently does.
Setup the new domain, create a blank index.php page and just replicate the internal page and URL structure.
FYI, John actually talked about URL structure for hreflang just 2 days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1sewHcbKTJw#t=2171In an ideal world you want to create a clever bit of PHP so that your code is being pulled from one directory otherwise you will have 2 versions of your site that you will need to maintain and that would just be a royal pain in the a$$.
Before you do anything I suggest you read the page below and watch the video by Maile Ohye on there too.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=enFell free to ask me any questions I have had to do this on a few sites and have been doing it for a long time now.
Setup your current site as the x-default and the new one as "EN" so that all english inquiries are served up by Google to your new site.
I look forward to hearing how it goes. FYI its possible you may see your results drop for a day or two and then popup with the old URL again and then the new one, It can take a few days for it to recalibrate. It can also happen right away and then random adjustments happen over the next few weeks.
Also make sure to use fetch as Google in WMT on both site pages to get Googlebot looking at your pages ASAP. I have seen results in 30 seconds before.
-
@Gary, Would this work between a .com & .net website? I'm willing to test anything at this point. Thanks!
-
@ruth
I urge you to try the hreflang solution sometime as a test.
"but it's not something I would test unless you actually do have different English-speaking audiences."
You can Always set the old domain to "x-default" and the new one to "EN" so that all English search results switch to the new site, this is great for sites not willing to wait up to a year for a Penguin refresh or affected by other SERPS suppression. Both sites can be identical and will not cause duplication issues. hreflang is amazing tool for testing.
-
Thanks Ruth for your feedback. I just wanted to address your 2 points above:
-
we actually have been adding all new links to our original disavow file, so we are all set there.
-
yes, we do understand that the loss of links did cause a drop in rankings. Due to this, we've actually started building out natural links throuhh outreach & PR, redesigned the entire site & updated all content as well Along with ongoing contemy creation on site and off.
With those things in mind, is there anything else left? I'm just wondering if we're completely missing something and in getting desperate - is this domain just dead?
And thanks for the heads up on the hreflang, that was a little over my head.
Thanks for your feedback
-
-
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- When disavowing new inbound links, make sure that you're adding them to your existing disavow file - if you just submit the new sites, that new disavow file will overwrite the previous one and un-disavow links.
- A manual penalty is only part of the traffic/ranking loss you'll see with Penguin. Don't forget that you also lost the link value of a bunch of spammy links that previously were providing value. The penalty may be gone, but so are your links! To regain traffic levels, you'll need to build new quality inbound links, so make sure that's a big part of your strategy going forward.
I haven't tried the hreflang solution, so I can't comment on its effectiveness, but it's not something I would test unless you actually do have different English-speaking audiences.
Good luck!
-
Thank you for the lengthy response! I am not sure how to use hreflang but will look into it more this week. As for the your final question, our manual penalty was revoked in Oct. 2013 & it just hasn't performed worth a damn since. We updated all content and are working on a design refresh now in order to support responsive design - hoping that would help as we'd hate to change the domain but we're just at a loss & getting desperate. This is out only client who came to use for this type of cleanup service that has not yet recovered.
-
I have the ultimate answer for you and you will not find this elsewhere online.
I have been through this process and it was a huge pain the a$$
I spoke with John Mueller at Google for years trying to resolve our issues until one day we spoke about hreflang. At which point John said to me that it would be OK to use it. So we played with it and it turned out that we recovered IMMEDIATELY from penguin for a new domain that was hrefland linked from our original site.
So basically this allowed us to keep our original brand name site up while traffic was going to our new co.uk site (in your case .net)
Let say for instance your client is US based. Take the .com site and set it as x-default, then set the new .net site as "en" or if you want to be more specific "en-US".
All Google traffic in english or english from google.com in the US will now start flowing in your non penalised site. the hreflang simply does a swap in those search engines but it happens before the penalty is enforced. So your rankings will return right away depending on where you would now rank after the penalty is lifted and your new content will also be back to their rightful ranking positions. Basically all the suppression is gone.
Dont worry about duplicate content as hreflang handles all that. Its very common for sites to have just a few small changes such as $ to £ or a few spelling changes like color and colour. There is no downside.
If you are clever with the way you code your site you can make it a seamless transition without having to maintain code on two domains. Only took me a few hours to code something up.
The best thing is it opens the door to targeting multiple regions of the world with other languages. (When you are ready).
Hope that answers your question.
Also FYI, when did your manual penalty get revoked? It can take up to a year for your site to be ready for the refresh to consider it OK to lift the suppression. Based on that you may have not been ready for the OCT 2014 refresh and may be waiting for the next one which could be a long way away.
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
-
Article section on site or blog?
So, I've just started using MOZ since I've decided I wanna be an "expert" in SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KasperGJ
I run a couple of successful websites in Denmark and I've had some SEO guy do some SEO a few years back, but now I wanna learn this myself. I've already read a lot of books, blogs on the subject and talked with several SEO "experts". Anyways, I have a concrete "problem" which I need some help on deciding what to do. Its the same issue / dilemma on all my sites. Dilemma
On my site i have a menu-section called Articles and tips. As the name implies it's basically articles and tips on subjects related to the site.
The articles are both informal for the users and I also use these to attract new users on specific keywords.
The articles are not "spam" articles or quickly made articles, the actually give good information to the users and are wellwritten and so. I've hired a girl to create more articles, so there will be a good flow on articles, interviews and so on soon. Some SEO guys tells me, that I should create and use a external blog "instead" and post the articles there instead of on my site. (ex www.newsiteblog.com) And another SEO guy tells me that I should run a blog on my own site (ex www.ownsite.com/blog) , where I post the articles. I have a really hard time deciding what is the best way, since I hear all kinds of ideas, and really dont know who to trust. My own idea is, that it seems "stupid" to take content from the site and put on external blog.
Then I would also have to create a new blog, and point links from that to my site and so. Any of you guys have any ideas? Sorry for my bad english.0 -
New site causes massive drop off in ranking, old site restored how long to recover?
Hello, We launched and updated version of our site, mainly design changes and some functionality. 3 days after the launch we vanished from the rankings, previous page one results were now out of the top 100. We have identified some of the issues with the new site and chose to restore the old well ranking site. My question is how long might it take for the ranking to come back, if at all? The drop happened on the third day and the site was restored on the third day. We are now on day 6. Using GWT with have used fetch as Google and resubmitted the site map. Any help would be gladly received. Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesBryant0 -
Should I redirect images when I migrate my site
We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?0 -
Implications from portfolio site
I'm looking for a bit of advice regarding links coming into main site from another site in the client portfolio. The main site we are working on has been going great, organic traffic has grown considerably. The past few weeks there has been a subtle decline including ranking for a few keywords down a little. What I have noticed is that there is another site in the portfolio (that I am not working on) has had a steady tailspin in organic traffic since Jan and i've been informed it is a dying site in terms of the products offered. This has some links in the main menu going directly to the main site. My gut feeling is to isolate the secondary site from the main (no-follow or remove links), but the impact on slightly dropped rankings on the main site is not directly related to those linked pages. Would you go for it and isolate anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Panda/Penguin & more than one services site in niche
Hello, My friend has a personal development training site. I have been advised not to make separate personal coaching sites for the owners of the training sites. Do you have experience that Panda/Penguin could penalize for separate sites in a similar niche? Do you need any more info to give a good response? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
What is wrong with my site?
I could use suggestions/input. My site is consistently being beaten by doorway pages with zero to no content. In fact, on the keyword "lawrenceville plumber" I am being beaten by a KID with a blank wordpress installation. I really need help determining what my issues are and what I can do to help. According to all of the graders, ranks, etc my site is great. I have written tons of unique content, have added a blog unique articles and self-helps. Please help! My site is www.akinsplumbing.net. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chuckakins0 -
Examples of sites other than Hubpages that have used subdomains to recover from Panda?
Everyone knows subdomains worked for Hubpages to recover from Panda. Does anyone know of other examples of sites that have recovered from Panda using subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Critique My Site For SEO
Hi Everyone, I was wondering if someone might critique my site and let me know what you think. I've done pretty much everything I know to do proper seo for my site. I'd love to hear some critiques about what I am doing wrong. I'm not sure if my titles are okay, being that they are similar amongst pages. The other thing is that for all the javascript buttons on the top I have no followed them since they don't have any anchor text. The way google will crawl my page is through the links in the footer. I was thinking of moving them throughout the body of the page since I hear google isn't giving as much weight to footer links. I also wanted to hear what you think about putting a blog on my site and updating with fresh content as opposed to creating a separate blog and then linking back to my website with anchor text. Thanks for all the help. And glad to be a member Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wsh150