Abused seo unintentionally, now need a way out
-
Hello,
I have been in contact with a smo to optimize my site for search engines and social media sites. my site was doing great from last 4 years.
but suddenly it started dropping in ranking. then i came and joined seomoz pro to find a way out.
i was suggested to categories content in form of subdomains ... well that put a huge toll on my rankings.. thanks to suggestions here i have 301 them to sub directories.
Now another huge question arises. i found out that my smo guy was taking artificial votes or whatever youc all them on twitter, facebook and g+ ...twitter and facebook's are understandable but i am getting to think that these votings on g+ might have affected my site's ranking ?
here is a sample url http://www.designzzz.com/cutest-puppy-pictures-pet-photography-tips/
if you scroll below you will see 56 google plus 1s...
now the big question is, i have been creating genuince content. but nowt hat i am stuck in this situation, how to get out of it ?
changing urls will be bad for readers.. will a 301 will fix it ? or any other method.
thanks in advance
-
_I have checked some of the posts of the Home page and I see certain patterns and this is quite predictable:
1. Most of the posts are basically complication of images already available in other sites. Though the content is unique, the images are nothing new.
2. I have found two content heavy posts in the home page and what I believe that they are guest posts. Now, guest blogging is great but what I mean to say is that you should not be too dependent on guest blogging here. You need to come up with two or three posts [I prefer content heavy posts] before__3. Seems like you are publishing reviews. Make sure if these reviews are paid, you should be adding no follow tag against them. Though it is the linked sites that should be penalized for this, I prefer to be safe than sorry.
I know this may sound a bit harsh. I hope you would not mind. _
-
No problem friend. You are most welcome.
-
Great, thanks alot dude :}
-
That's true Ayaz. 301 does not serve the purpose in this case. As you have stopped this, sit tight and let us see how the 301 from the sub-domains to the sub-directories setup works. As far as my experience goes, adding new, unique, original and fresh content will speed up the process to come out of a penalty if there has been applied any.
Wish you all the best.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi.
-
Devanur,
I got this stopped couple months ago as i wasn't feeling comfortable with that at all.
At firs ti thought of adding a 301 to new urls. but then i noticed. 301 mvoes the g+ count as well.. so ofcourse it won't work.
oh well lets see how it goes now.
thanks for all the help
-
Ayaz, by now you should have asked those guys to stop this thing. If you have not, please do so quickly. Coming to undoing these, even I don't have a clue. Most of these would be some fake accounts or accounts created for only this purpose. The best thing you can do as of now is to stop this from growing further. Moreover, we are not sure about if these inflated social signals are the cause for the drop in the rankings. Gut feeling says, there is nothing that you should be worried about and these are not the ones responsible for the loss. Having that said, please stop this immediately and consult your SEO guy who did this and find out what he has to say about this.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi.
-
Thanks Devanur.
But this leaves me clueless now what should i do :{
i need to undo these penalities i am suffering from.
-
Hi Ayaz,
Though I cannot tie a knot with a proof between the drop in your rankings and the artificially inflated social signals in this case, I can definitely say one thing that Google can sniff things like these very easily and it would be too late before you even realize the axe coming down on you. As we know that social signals have strong impact on the search engine rankings in certain niches, we should not try to play with these with an intention to get a boost in SERPs. Next time when you hire an SEO or SMO please make sure to get a list of deliverables from them. Black hat or acts of cheating search engines might work temporarily but you should run away from them by all means if you want to be safe.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi.
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
-
White H1 Tag Hurting SEO?
Hi, We're having an issue with a client not wanting the H1 tag to display on their site and using an image of their logo instead. We made the H1 tag white (did not deliberately hide with CSS) and i just read an article where this is considered black hat SEO. https://www.websitemagazine.com/blog/16-faqs-of-seo The only reason we want to hide it is because it looks redundant appearing there along with the brand name logo. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would putting the brand logo image inside of an H1 tag be ok? Thanks for the help
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac261 -
.com geotagging redirect to subdomains - will it affect SEO?
Hi guys, We have a .com domain and we've got geoIP on it, so UK goes to .co.uk and USA goes to .com/us We're just migrating over to another platform so we're thinking of keeping a "dummy" server just to do this geoIP pointing for us. Essentially .com will just point over to the right place and hold a specific .com/abc (which is generic for everyone worldwide) Current Scenario:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Infruition
.com (Magento + geoIP)
.com/us (US Magento)
.co.uk (UK - geoIP redirect to Shopify)
.com/abc (sits on Magento server) Wanted Scenario:
.com - used for GEOIP and a specific .com/abc (for all users)
.co.uk (UK) - Shopify eCom
.com/us -> migration to us.xx.com (USA) - Shopify eCom I just wanted to know if this will affect our rankings on google? Also, any advice as to the best practises here would be great. Thanks! Nitesh0 -
Advice needed! How to clear a website of a Wordpress Spam Link Injection Google penalty?
Hi Guys, I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection. The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected. All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built. That was the easy part 🙂 The problems comes when I look on Webmaster. Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site. These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links. I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings. Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively. I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine. Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty? Thanks, Duncan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Website that just got hit....Need some tips or ideas...
Hey guys, The website of the company i work hit in the PR update two days ago . A little history , the site was notice by Google about spam links around 5-6 months ago .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WayneRooney
Since then there is a company that cleans all the spam links and manage all the disavow process. In the last penguin update ( about two months ago ) the site jumped like crazy in the ranking and stayed there ever since... In the last three months we create less than ten links to the site, and we have focus all our work to improve
the optimization of the site.
It should be noted that the company is investing a lot in social networks and all the work in the past 3 month are White and clean... Now, two days ago in the PR update (more or less) the site just dropped , but when i say dropped , it's 200 keys that was in page 1-2 that just want out to page 5-6-7. Like the website is gone, i never see something like this... The things that pass through my head: A lot of the links the linking to the site with high PR lost their pr and now they are worthless, but still this drop ? its to extreme.
Or that Google received the disavow and just disavow a lot of links.... Does anyone have any ideas or tips on the subject ? Thank you0 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
SEO from INDIA Smarter then Google?
Exploring this url: filterscanada.ca In Open Site Explorer, it is clear those guys bought one of those package available on site like eLance.com a low price over seas!!! Where freelancer around the word can be hired for a fews bucks. For example, I post a job on eLance for SEO and most of the freelancer submitting where from INDIA. For just a few hundreds dollars, you can get a complet SEO package. At first, the price was attractive, but when posting on seoMoz and doing research, I came to the conclusion, the techniques they use might hurt more the produce positive result... How can you get a D.A. of 45 using backlinks they get? I read all those things about Google algorithm, and Panda and Penguin and this and that... Being impossible to crack! Do you have a explanation? I work really hard ans spends lots of $$$ to have a clean site selling furnace filters
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigBlaze205
I follow all the SEO guide lines, practice only white hat trying to built somethings, but with a P.A. of 19 and a competitors ranking like this, I ask myself: "Maybe INDIA is smarter then Google and I should do like this site, spend a couple of hundreds dollars and buy myself a high D.A."0 -
Do pingbacks in Wordpress help or harm SEO? Or neither?
Hey everyone, Just wondering, do pingbacks in Wordpress help or harm SEO? Or neither?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jhinchcliffe1 -
SEO dead?
What does everyone think about this article? http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2 … l-content/ I tend to think its off base, Link building still works and there are tons of things that have to do with SEO that have nothing to do with link building... I think its actually quite ridiculous and written by people that actually no nothing about SEO...kind of a lame attempt by Forbes, and if anything at all, this is just forbes practicing "SEO" with a link attraction post like this. Becase SEO, is NOT dead
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imageworks-2612901