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
-
How to fix Category Duplicate Titles Issue?
How to fix Category Duplicate titles and descriptions issues? Most common problem in Wordpress. Example - http://www.abc.com.au/news
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | varunrupal
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/3
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/4
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/5
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/10
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/6
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/7
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/9
http://www.abc.com.au/news/page/80 -
Site Migration and Traffic Help!
Hi Moz, I recently migrated my website with the help of an SEO company using 301 redirects. The reason for the move was to change our CMS from .aspx to Drupal/Wordpress. The homepage (www.shiftins.com) and the blog (www.shiftins.com/blog) were the only two pages that kept the same url. Everything else was redirected. It's been about two months since the redirects were completed and traffic has dropped off about 90%. I'm starting to worry that something was not done properly and my traffic may never return. The process for the redirects seem correct when I checked the work the SEO company did. All pages were duplicated, redirected to individual pages, then the old pages were de-indexed. Are there any insights the community can provide? Please help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shictins1 -
Getting too many links on Google search results, how do I fix?
I'm a total newbie so I apologize for what I am sure is a dumb question — I recently followed Moz suggestions for increasing visibility on my site for a specific keyword by including that keyword in more verbose page descriptions for multiple pages. This worked TOO well as now that keyword is bringing up too many results in Google for these different pages on my site . . . is there a way to compile them into one result with the subpages like for instance, the attached image for a search on Apple? Do I need to change something in my robots.txt file to direct these to my main page? Basically, I am a photographer and a search for my name now brings up each of my different photo gallery pages in multiple results, it's a little over the top. Thanks for any and all help! CNPJZgb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jason54540 -
Problems with a website-help
Soooooo, I did a crawl report on this site : www.greatwesternflooring.com and this was what was on the report. This is a dnn site. I'm guessing the site has a redirect loop given the http status code. Can anyone help me with a fix. (the developers have said there is no redirect on the site......clearly there is....) | http://www.greatwesternflooring.com/ | 2015-01-07T21:32:25Z | 609 : Redirect to already-visited URL received for page request. | Error attempting to request page; see title for details. | 302 | http://www.greatwesternflooring.com | <colgroup><col width="319"> <col width="144"> <col width="378"> <col span="39" width="64"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Britewave
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0 -
Should we get our W3 Validation Errors Fixed for SEO. How important is it ?
Hi All, We implement most things on our Website that is recommended and most recently we did Schema.org. However, one area which we haven't done is fix our W3 Validation Errors. My developer thinks they are not so as such and it's more about ticking the boxes but does anymore have any experience whereby fixing all these did actually have an SEO /Ranking Benefit ?.. Most of our URL'S are indexed and google recrawls regularly so I am not sure as to it's importance. Also we have a mobile responsive version so I wasn't sure if it more important because of this. From what I read, I can't see to any benefit from fixing it all but just wanted some other opinions? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
What do you think of this post? An ordered article or not???
Hi, Just encountered the following article on Digital Trends: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/lg-z-rumored/ This is a huge and respected site. Notice, that whenever the word "smartphone" or "smartphones" is mentioned, there is a link to Sprint. Needless to say that Sprint has nothing to do directly with the article's subject (a new LG smartphone that may be coming soon). So, is this an ordered piece? Is this legit? Does it assist Sprint with the article that is not really related? Should I pursue these type of articles (links) for my site or only HUGE companies can get away with it? Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Strange URLs, how do I fix this?
I've just check Majestic and have seen around 50 links coming from one of my other sites. The links all look like this: http://www.dwww.mysite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
http://www.eee.mysite.com
http://www.w.mysite.com The site these links are coming from is a html site. Any ideas whats going on or a way to get rid of these urls? When I visit the strange URLs such as http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it shows the home page of http://www.mysite.com. Is there a way to redirect anything like this back to the home page?0 -
How long does a Google penalty last if you have fixed the problem??
Hi I stupidly thought that it would be a good idea to set up a reciprocal links page on my website named 'links'. I did this because my competitors were linking to these pages so I though it would be a good idea and I genuinely didn't know that you could be punished for this. Within about 3 weeks my rank dropped about 3 pages. I have since removed the links and the page was cached last Friday but the site still appears to have a penalty. I assumed when Google cached the page and saw the links were not there anymore that the penalty would be lifted. Anyone got any ideas? ps. The competitor websites had broken their links pages into various categories relating to the website i.e. related directories etc. so this might be why they weren't penalized.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BelfastSEO0