Was hit with panda in 2012, what to do now?
-
Hi Folks,
back in june 2012 when link building was the thing and I had no idea how to do it and hence outsourced link building. Company 1 would write a post and distribute it on multiple different domains after spinning it. Company 2, after company 1 was fired did directory submissions on PR0 websites for two months before i discontinued the service with them.
I still have the excel file of the links they built.
It goes without mentioning that the links were junk. When panda came about our website was hit. Back then i let it slide and we stopped link building and started doing things "white hat". Genuinely doing good things so to say. I never however did anything to fix the penalty.
Now i would like to look back at that issue and see if the penalties are still holding us back and if I can do anything to fix it.
Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter?
How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer?
What do you SEO mozters recommend?
-
Thanks for the mention Rebecca. I wanted to point out that link removal is likely not as important to Google when it comes to Penguin rather than a manual penalty. I wrote more about this here:
Also, the comments in your disavow file are not read by Google. The file is processed automatically so lines starting with "#" are just skipped. They're mostly for your own records. It's confusing because the documentation Google gives makes it look like you should be including info about whether or not you've tried to remove a link in your disavow file. But really, this is only information that is necessary in a reconsideration request which would be for a manual penalty.
-
These are all good questions, but tough ones to answer. I had a quick look at your backlinks and you've definitely got links that will be likely to affect you in the eyes of Penguin. If rankings dropped in May of 2012 that fits as there was a Penguin update then as well.
If Penguin is the culprit, then in order to escape, the following has to happen:
-
You have to do a really thorough cleanup of your links. I recommend removing links that are easy to remove and disavowing everything else on the domain level. The only sites that I have seen recover from Penguin are sites that have been VERY thorough with their disavow work.
-
Google has to recrawl your links to see that they are now removed or disavowed. This can take weeks and some links can take months to get recrawled.
-
You have to wait for a Penguin refresh to happen. At this point we have been waiting since last fall and Google says it will be a few more months yet.
-
You have to have a good site with decent good links. (It sounds like this is not an issue for you.)
I understand your frustration with SEO experts. The problem is that in the past, very little technical knowledge was needed in order to do SEO. Anyone could buy or build links that would work. But now, the pool of people who can effectively help a site rank is significantly smaller. And, anyone who does really good work is either quite booked or very expensive.
As far as link cleanup goes, I feel that there are some people who have a really good sense of what Google wants to see cleaned up, but there are others who do a horrible job. You definitely want to make sure you don't hire someone who relies mostly on an automated tool for link disavow as often those will flag good links and will miss a lot of bad links. If you are going to hire someone what I would recommend doing is asking for references and examples of sites which they have helped escape Penguin. Don't let them hide behind an NDA. If someone is good at doing Penguin work they'll definitely have a list of people willing to recommend them.
The other issue is whether there are other things holding you back. That's tough to answer without really digging in. A thorough site quality audit is never a bad idea. But, from what you've explained it certainly sounds like links are the first place where I would focus. I would want to get those links cleaned as soon as possible so that you have a chance to get them recrawled before Penguin rolls out again.
And finally...Go Jays Go!
-
-
First make sure what you're dealing with.
- Go into Google Analytics >> Acquisition >> Organic and find the week (or day, if you can) of the drop in organic traffic.
If you don't have GA, you can try something like Searchmetrics.
- Correlate to this:
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
- Look for recovery in organic traffic.
If you think Penguin is still impacting you, I'd recommend requesting removal. In my experience it's not very effective to seek the removal of links, but it's worth a try. If you don't think it's impacting you or still affecting you, just do good stuff going forward. In either case, submit a disavow on the bad links. Don't get caught up fixing things that aren't impacting your site.
If there is an organic impact, this is what I'd suggest.
-Start with a good form letter. Include the URL where the link is located, write up a professional, well-phrased request, and send it out. If there are a ton of sites, you might want to have someone who knows a good link from a bad link sort it for you and gather contact info.
-Send a follow-up to sites that don't respond.
-Submit the disavow and wait for an update.
You could hire someone to do link removal, but I don't think it's often a good way to spend money. Many of these sites are abandoned, and no one is reading the email.
If it's Panda after all, submit a new question and we'll talk
-
It's my understanding that Google generally wants to see some kind of good-faith effort at removal. When we submitted our own disavow file, it included notes about our contact attempts.
-
And also, How would you recommend we systematically appoach this issue to find the actual source as u piint out?
-
Thank you for the answer rebecca. I understand why google is requesting us to contact the webmaster first, but generally i doubt "freedirectoryseobest.com" and "articlemarketingforseo.com" are professionally enough set up for their webmasters to actually answer. Would google be upset if i just disavow the links without contacting the webmaster. that would save lots of time. what you think, Rebecca?
Mit freunlichen Gruessen nach Deutschland
-
Are you sure it was Panda that affected you? As far as we know, Panda really has very little to do with the quality of your backlinks and rather is about the overall quality of your website.
Were you hit around April 24, 2012? That's when Penguin first came out? But, it can be tricky, because there were Panda updates around the time too - April 19 and April 27.
Ah...but I just reread your question and you said that you started building links in June of 2012. There was also a Penguin update on October 5, 2012.
I've seen a lot of people who have gone on a crazy link pruning spree when really, if the issue truly is Panda, cleaning up your links is not going to help. If you've got spammy links, it's never a bad idea to clean them up. But, it sounds like the more pressing issue here is trying to figure out exactly what hit you. It's also possible that this has nothing to do with Panda or Penguin and actually is something else.
If you can pinpoint the date of your rankings drop, then let us know. That will help.
-
Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter?
- Never too late
How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer?
- Depends on your budget and time. Rebecca's suggestion is good to use a tool like Link Detox and contact every webmaster. If you got the time to do it yourself, go for it..otherwise if you got the budget, hire a freelancer but check everything.
What do you SEO mozters recommend?
- Rebecca's post summed it up
-
First, if bad links are the culprit, then the issue wasn't Panda so much as it was likely Penguin.
If you have the links in an Excel file, then you're off to a really good start. Run them through a utility like Link Detox to see which are truly bad (there may be some gems in there worth saving). Reach out to every webmaster and request the links be removed. Then build and submit a Disavow file through your Google Webmaster Console.
Also, read up on how to use the Disavow Tool. And anything else Marie Haynes writes about Penguin is bound to be gold, too.
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
-
If our site hasn't been hit with the Phantom Update, are we clear?
Our SEO provider created a bunch of "unique url" websites that have direct match domain names. The content is pretty much the same for over 130 websites (city name is different) that link directly to our main site. For me this was a huge red flag, but when I questioned them and they said it was fine. We haven't seen a drop in traffic, but concerned that Google just hasn't gotten to us. DA for each of these sites are 1 after several months. Should we be worried? I think yes, but I am an SEO newbie.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Buddys0 -
How to recognize Panda, Penguin or Unnatural Links Penalty ?
Hey guys, today I've received below message from Google, but I'm confused that there NO such message in WMT ?!??!?!?! I've login /out few times and situation is still same ?!?!? Still Nothing there ? Anybody had same issue ? Do I need to fill reconsideration request ? Pleased to hear back from you guys. NikoT Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to .com/ Dear site owner or webmaster of , We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NikoT0 -
Is Google now punishing anchor text?
Hi All, I was just wondering if Google is starting to punish anchor text links? I've noticed that one of my clients domains has slightly reduced and they have slipped a few places in rankings for a key term since. I found this bizarre as the last few links I built were both relevant and strong but I did use an anchor text? Any feedback would be useful, I'm slightly confused here?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
Advice on links after Penguin hit
Firstly we have no warnings or messages in WMT. We have racked up thousands of anchor text urls. Our fault, we didnt nofollow and also some of our many cms sites replicated the links sitewide to the tune of 20,000 links. I`m in the process of removing the code which causes this problem in most of the culprit sites but how long will it take roughly for a crawl to recalculate the links? In my WMT it still shows the links increasing but I think this is retrospective data. However, after this crawl we should see a more relevant link count. We also provide some web software which has been used by many sites. Google may consider our followed anchor text violating spam rules. So I ask, if we were to change the link text to our url only and add nofollow, will this improve the spam issue? We could have as many as 4,000 links per website, as it is a calendar function and list all dates into the future.......and we would like to retain a link to our website of course for marketing purposes. What we dont want is sitewide link spam again. Some of our other links are low quality, some are okay. However, we have lost rankings, probably due to low quality links and overuse of anchor text.. Is this the case the Google has just devalued the links algorythmically or is there an actual penalty to make the rankings drop? As we have no warnings in WMT, I feel there isnt the need to remove the lower quality links and in most cases we havent control over the link placements. We should just rectify that we have a better future linking profile? If we have to remove spam links, then that can only be a good reason to cause negative seo?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xtopher660 -
Has Panda help this site achieve great heights? How? and Why?
Today I went about my business in trying to understand what is happening in our market, eyewear, after the last Panda update. I was interested to know if any of our competitors were effected as much as we were for a very competitive key phrase To my surprise a new kid appeared on the block, well, on page one, position two. Imagine my second surprise, when the new kid turn out to be a 3 month old domain, yes 3 months, with zero page rank and zero back links. I was in for one more surprise before I stood up, walked to the window and gazed into space to contenplate the meaning of Panda and SEO as we know it. This third surprise was the site in question is a counterfeiting site using black hat SEO with fast results. It has a Blog its a good looking site with the key phrase menstioned a hundred times. google-UK-%20Search-Result.jpg panda-help.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShoutChris0 -
One Blog Comment Now on Many Pages of The Same Domain
My question is I blog commented on this site http://blogirature.com/2012/07/01/half-of-200-signals-in-googles-ranking-algorithm-revealed/#comment-272 under the name "Peter Rota". For some reason the recent comments is a site wide link so, bascially my link from my website is pretty much on each page of their site now. I also noticed that the anchor text for each one of my links says "Peter Rota". This is my concern will google think its spammy if im on a lot of pages on a same site for one blog comment, and will I be penailzied for the exact same anchor text on each page? If this is the case what could I do in trying to get the links removed? thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
We seem to have been hit by the penguin update can someone please help?
HiOur website www.wholesaleclearance.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update, I'm not a SEO expert and when I first started my SEO got court up buying blog links, that was about 2 years ago and since them and worked really hard to get good manual links.Does anyone know of a way to dig out any bad links so I can get them removed, any software that will give me a list of any of you guys want to do take a look for me? I'm willing to pay for the work.Kind RegardsKarl.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0 -
Dramatic fall in SERP's for all keywords at end of March 2012?? Help!
Hi, Our website www.photoworld.co.uk has been improving it's SERP's for the last 12 months or so, achieving page 1 rankings for most of our key terms. Then suddenly, around the end of March, we suffered massive drops in nearly all of our key terms (see attached image for more info). Basically I wondered if anyone had any clues on what Google has suddenly taken a huge dislike to with our site and steps we can put in place to aid with rankings recovery ASAP. Thanks n8taO.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cewe0