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
-
Does this graph look like a Penguin 2.0 hit?
Hello,Does the attached graph look like a Penguin 2.0 hit? Keep in mind that on our eCommerce site most purchases are from return customers. I forgot to add here that we cut a bunch of paid links in May 2013 as well. We quit cutting paid links when our rankings dropped - we thought it was the paid links. We currently have 30% paid links. Penguin 2.0 was on May 22. ga2.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Panda Recovery: Is a reconsideration request necessary?
Hi everyone, I run a 12-year old travel site that primarily publishes hotel reviews and blog posts about ways to save when traveling in Europe. We have a domain authority of 65 and lots of high quality links from major news websites (NYT, USA Today, NPR, etc.). We always ranked well for competitive searches like "cheap hotels in Paris," etc., for many, many years (like 10 years). Things started falling two years ago (April 2011)--I thought it was just normal algorithmic changes, and that our pages were being devalued (and perhaps, it was). So, we continued to bulk up our reviews and other key pages, only to see things continue to slide. About a month ago I lined up all of our inbound search traffic from Google Analytics and compared it to SEO Moz's timeline of Google updates. Turns out every time there was a Panda roll-out (from the second one in April 2011) our traffic tumbled. Other updates (Penguin, etc.) didn't seem to make a difference. But why should our content that we invest so much in take a hit from Panda? It wasn't "thin." But thin content existed elsewhere on our site: We had a flights section with 40,000 pages of thin content, cranked out of our database with virtually no unique content. We had launched that section in 2008, and it had never been an issue (and had mostly been ignored), but now, I believed, it was working against us. My understanding is that any thin content can actually work against the entire site's rankings. In summary: We had 40,000 thin flights pages, 2,500 blog posts (rich content), and about 2,500 hotel-related pages (rich and well researched "expert" content). So, two weeks ago we dropped almost the entire flights section. We kept about 400 pages (of the 40,000) with researched, unique and well-written information, and we 410'd the rest. Following the advice of so many others on these boards, we put the "thin" flights pages in their own sitemap so we could watch their index number fall in Webmaster tools. And we watched (with some eagerness and trepidation) as the error count shot up. Google has found about half of them at this point. Last week I submitted a "reconsideration request" to Google's spam team. I wasn't sure if this was necessary (as the whole point of dropping the pages, 410'ing and so forth was to fix it on our end, which would hopefully filter down through the SERPs eventually). However, I thought it was worth sending them a note explaining the actions we had taken, just in case. Today I received a response from them. It includes: "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages..." And thus, I'm a bit confused. If they say that there wasn't any manual action taken, is that a bad thing for my site? Or is it just saying that my site wasn't experiencing a manual penalty, however Panda perhaps still penalized us (through a drop in rankings) -- and Panda isn't considered "manual." Could the 410'ing of 40,000 thin pages actually raise some red flags? And finally, how long do these issues usually take to clear up? Pardon the very long question and thanks for any insights. I really appreciate the advice offered in these forums.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomNYC0 -
One of my outbound links website go hit by panda!
Hi mozzers, today I received a message from one of my blogger partners announcing me that he got hit by panda. 2 weeks ago I had him placing 2 anchors one in our main domain and a second one on our subdomain. I know panda focuses essentially on dups and I have paid attention to our webmaster tools to make sure we haven t got any messages Which we re good with. What do you guys suggest, will this affect us at some point or we re good? also in case that we re good will panda affect the blogger's authority therefore ours? if yes I should probably remove them, right? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
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 -
Impressions in Google SERP has declined from 3500 to 1600 after 5-25-2012\. Is it Penguin?
It's about the website http://www.apartments-houseboats-amsterdam.com/ The visitors had declined from 270 to 150 visitors per day. Is this caused by the Google update Penguin? If so what can I do to solve the problem? Thank you for your time and effort,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | letsbuilditnl0 -
EMD with 3.3million broad match searches got hit hard by Panda/Penguin
k, so I run an ecommerce website with a kick ass domain name. 1 keyword (plural)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SwissNinja
3.3 million broad match searches (local monthly)
3.2 million phrase match
100k exact match beginning of march I got a warning in GWT about unnatural links. I feel pretty certain its a result of an ex-employee using an ALN listing service to drip spun article links on splogs. This was done also for another site of mine, which received the same warning, except bounced back much sooner (from #3 for EMD w/ 100k broad, 60k phrase and 12k exact, singular keyword phrase) I did file reinclusion on the 2nd (smaller) domain. Received unnatural warning on 4/13 and sent reconsideration on 5/1 (tune of letter is "I have no clue what is up, I paid someone $50 and now Im banned) As of this morning, I am not ranking for any of my terms (had boucned back on main keyword to spot #30 after being pushed down from #4) now back to the interesting site....
this other domain was bouncing between 8-12 for main keyword (EMD) before we used ALN.
Once we got warning, we did nothing. Once rankings started to fall,we filed reinclusion request...rankings fell more, and filed another more robustly written request (got denials within 1 week after each request)until about 20 days ago when we fell off of the face of the earth. 1- should I take this as some sort of sandbox? We are still indexed, and are #1 for a search on our domain name. Also still #1 in bing (big deal) 2- I've done a detailed analysis of every link they provide in GWT. reached out to whatever splog people I could get in touch with asking them to remove articles. I was going to file another request if I didn't reappear after 31 days after I fell off completely. Am I wasting my time? there is no doubt that sabatoge could be committed by competition by blasting them with spam links (previously I believed these would just be ignored by google to prevent sabatoge from becoming part of the job for most SEOs) Laugh at me, gasp in horror with me, or offer some advice... I'm open to chat and would love someone to tell me about a legit solution to this prob if they got one thanks!0 -
EXPERT CHALLENGE: What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?
FOR ALL SEO THOUGHT LEADERS...What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change? NOTE: My hope is that the responses left on this thread will ultimately benefit all members of the community and give recognition to the true thought leaders within the SEO space. That being said, my challenge is a 2 part question: With the 80/20 rule in mind, and in light of recent algorithm changes, what would YOU focus most of your SEO budget on if you had to choose? Let's assume you're in a competitive market (ie #1-5 on page 1 has competitors with 20,000+ backlinks - all ranging from AC Rank 7 to 1). How would you split your total monthly SEO budget as a general rule? Ex) 60% link building / 10% onsite SEO / 10% Social Media / 20% content creation? I realize there are many "it depends" factors but please humor us anyways. Link building appears to have become harder and harder as google releases more and more algorithm changes. For link building, the only true white hat way of proactively generating links (that I know of) is creating high quality content that adds value to customers (ie infographics, videos, etc.), guest blogging, and Press Releases. The con to these tactics is that you are waiting for others to find and pick up your content which can take a VERY long time, so ROI is difficult to measure and justify to clients or C-level management. That being said, how are YOU allocating your link building budget? Are all of these proactive link building tactics a waste of time now? I've heard it couldn't hurt to still do some of these, but what are your thoughts and what is / isn't working for you? Here they are: A. Using spun articles edited by US based writers for guest blog content B. 301 Redirects C. Social bookmarking D. Signature links from Blog commenting E. Directory submissions F. Video Submissions G. Article Directory submissions H. Press release directory submissions I. Forum Profile Submissions J. Forum signature links K. RSS Feed submissions L. Link wheels M. Building links (using scrapebox, senukex, etc.) to pages linked to your money site N. Links from privately owned networks (I spoke to an SEO company that claims to have over 4000 unique domains which he uses to boost rankings for his clients) O. Buying Contextual Text Links All Expert opinions are welcomed and appreciated 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoeric2 -
Has anyone been able to recover a site from that was slapped by panda?
I have a client that the only thing I can determine is over optimization of a couple anchor terms which the person no longer ranks for..I tried mixing up with brandname , brandname.com and a diversity of links but nothing seems to budge anyone have a similar problem?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | foreignhaus0