Help, really struggling with fixing mistakes post-Penguin
-
We had previously implemented a strategy of paying for lots of links and focusing on 3 or 4 keywords as our anchors, which used to REALLY work (I know, I know, bad black hat strategy - I have since learned my lesson). These keywords and others have since plummeted up to 100 spots since Panda 3.3 and Penguin. So I'm trying to go in and fix all our mistakes cuz our domain is too valuable to us just to start over from scratch.
Yesterday I literally printed a 75 page document of all of our links according to Open Site Explorer. I have been going in and manually changing anchor text wherever I can, and taking down the very egregious links if possible.This has involved calling and emailing webmasters, digging up old accounts and passwords, and otherwise just trying to diversify our anchor text and remove bad links. I've also gone into our site and edited some internal links (also too weighty on certain keywords) and removed other links entirely.
My rankings have gone DOWN more today. A lot. WTF does Google want? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Should we be deleted links from all private networks entirely or just trying to vary the anchor text? Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-
I would go through your list and remove the links and not try to vary anchor text at this point. I've been hit was well and moved to a domain I have held for years, but am slowly removing bad links that are on networks or painfully outside my niche. I would suggest naturally building links slowly with partial match anchor text and with the majority of the links having anchor text of your brand
-
Hi LilyRay,
Regarding your Penguin penalization, I would treat it like any other pre-Penguin link-based penalty. I have worked with many sites that have been penalized for manipulative linking, and the process to get the penalty lifted is always the same:
- REMOVE as many of the manipulative links as you can. It's the link that Google has classified as manipulative. The anchor text was just the identifier that helped them find it. Changing the anchor text of a manipulative links and leaving them up will keep the penalties associated with those links in place.
Document all of the steps that you're taking to eliminate manipulative links. Make a neat, bulleted list, with the link(s), network(s), actions taken by you, and the results. In some cases, you won't be able to remove a link. That's understandable, as they're not in your control. While you're at it, clean up ANYTHING else on your site that could be perceived as on-page spam. You're trying to prove to Google that you are a good citizen of the web, so make your site as sparkly as you can.
Once you've completed these steps, submit all of your documented work as part of your reconsideration request, to show Google that you're operating in good faith. Under normal circumstances, wait times for reconsideration requests can be anywhere from a week to a month. With the mass of reconsiderations that Google is getting right now, I'd expect a longer wait.
I'm sure this process sounds painful, and it is, but it's the only way to get back from a penalty that I've seen be effective.
-
It was partially out of my control. Pressure from higher ups for instantaneous results. I've always supported and wanted to stick to white hat seo.
-
And promise yourself never to go for the quick and easy again.
-
Google since released a 52 pack of updates since the roll out of Penguin and Panda 3.6 which you may have been stung by almost immediately after the first hit.
SEOmoz provide up to date change history of algorithm updates as soon as they are released.
Any backlinks you have which are associated to blog rings / networks - I would delete as many as you can. If the network has been identified and blacklisted by Google, then they'll be rolling out penalties for any domains that have used them. Parallel to this, build some natural links to balance out your link profile as soon as you can too.
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
-
MOZ is showing that I have non- indexed blog tag posts are they supposed to be nonindexed. My articles are indexed just not the blog tags that take you to other similar articles do I need to fix this or is it ok?
MOZ is showing that my blog post tags are not indexed my question is should they be indexed? my articles are indexed just not the tags that take you to posts that are similar. Do I need to fix this or not? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tyler58910 -
Should I switch my website builder/host? Please help.
My website: www.joeborders.com is hosted with a service called jigsy: www.jigsy.com. I'm losing my mind trying to figure out if I should stay or not. Lol. I am positive I have done waaaayyy more work on my seo than many people ranking above me. I used to be on the first page, but over the last year I've slowly dropped in rankings. I've checked everything! I need to do some work on my blog, but I'm really thinking now that it might have something to do with my host. Some concerns I've identified: 1) I can't give pages individual h1 tags. The same one is blanketed across the site. 2) I'm told there are a lot of .css and JavaScript. 3) i cant redirect blog posts.....so moz is tagging me with 250 critical issues because my posts are on both www and http versions of my site .But that's all I know. I've talked with squarespace and WordPress and they have no way of transferring my site. It would probably take me a good 30 hours to set everything up....should i move? Please help 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joebordersmft0 -
Can someone help me with RegEx?
Hey! I am having a tough time figuring this out, and I have already signed up for my RegEx course. So in the mean time, could you please help me? I have two old URLs: /faq /faq.php The new one is /faqs How can I write a 301 redirect to include faq & faq.php in the same line? I basically want to capture /faq and anything beyond the q including the .php. I thought this would work: Redirect 301 /faq. http://www.blah.com/faqs Using the period to catch everything after the q and redirect it to the /faqs page. Extra credit: And why Redirect 301 vs. RedirectMatch 301? It is an Apache server and mod_ rewrite is on. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cyberlicious0 -
Google penguin penalty(s), please help
Hi MozFans, I have got a question out of the field about www.coloringpagesabc.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Question is why the rankings and traffic are going down down down the last 4 months. Costumer thinks he got hit by google penguin update(s). The site has about 600 page’s/posts al ‘optimized’ for old seo:
- Almost all posts are superb optimized for one keyword combination (like … coloring pages) there is a high keyword density on the keyword titles and descriptions are all the same like: <keyword>and this is the rest of my title, This is my description <keyword>and i like it internal linking is all with a ‘perfect’ keyword anchor text there is a ok backlink profile, not much links to inner pages
- there are social signals the content quality is low The site to me looks like a seo over optimized content farm Competition:
When I look at the competition. The most coloring pages websites don’t offer a lot of content (text) on there page. The offer a small text and the coloring pages (What it is about :-)) How to get the rankings back:
What I was thinking to do. rewrite the content to a smaller text. Low keyword density on the keyword and put the coloring pages up front. rewrite all titles and descriptions to unique titles and descriptions Make some internal links to related posts with a other anchor text. get linkbuilding going on inner pages get more social signals Am I on the right track? I can use some advise what to do, and where to start. Thanks!!</keyword></keyword> Maarten0 -
Penguin Update Issues.. What would you recommend?
Hi, We've been pretty badly hit by this penguin Update. Site traffic is down 40-50%. We suspect it's for a couple of reasons 1)Google is saying we have duplicate content. e.g. for a given category we will have 4-5 pages of content (products). So it's saying pagenum=2 , pagenum=3 etc are duplicate pages. We've implemented rel=canonical so that pagenum=2 point to the original category e.g. http://mydomain/widgets.aspx We've even specified pagenum as a url parameter that pagniates. Google still hasn't picked up these changes. How long does it take - it's been about a week 2)They've saying we have soft 404 errors. e.g. we remove a category or product we point users to a category or page not found. is it best to block googlebot from crawling these page by specifying in robots.txt. because we really don't care about these categories or product pages. How best to handle? 3)There are some bad directory and crawlers that have crawled our website but have put incorrect links . So we've got like 1700 product not found. I'm sure that's taking up a lot of crawling time. So how do we tell Google not to bother with these link coming from specific sources e.g. ignore all links coming from xxx.com. Any help will be much appreciated as this is Killing our business. Jay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ConservationM0 -
Do Banner Ads Help In Link Building?
We have been contacting some webmasters for building links, but a lot of them will only do banner ads on there site. Is having a keyword rich alt tag on the banner ad and a do follow link to our site just as good? Would like to hear your thoughts and l experiences in trying to leverage these banner ads to help in seo ranking. Thank you in advance for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave0 -
How to fix duplicated urls
I have an issue with duplicated pages. Should I use cannonical tag and if so, how? Or should change the page titles? This is causing my pages to compete with each other in the SERPs. 'Paradisus All Inclusive Luxury Resorts - Book your stay at Paradisus Resorts' is also used on http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5889 line 9 | | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5891 line 9 | | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5910 line 9 | | http://www.paradisus.com/booking-template.php?codigoHotel=5911 line 9 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
My ranking spiked then died in the butt? why? Please help!
Hi guys, I have been persevering with this ranking for some time now and thought you might be able to help. Or direct me to where I can get help. I am learning a lot through SEOmoz but I am still very green. Basically on the 20th of the 12th we jumped up to a 2nd place listing and then dropped back down on the 17th of the 1st 2011. The site is http://mlb.broomeaccommodation.com.au and the search term is 'Broome Accommodation' as you can see it is a considerable drop and really affecting our bookings and sales figures. I have attached a link to a screen capture of the problem - http://exitforward.com/kimberleyaccomm/seomoz.png Interested to hear your thoughts and get some help on this frustrating matter Kind regards Bodie Czeladka
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bodie0