I was hit bad by Penguin on 4-24-12.
-
I was hit bad by Penguin on 4-24-12. Never received a bad link warning from Google but I do have lots of bad links from a SEO company years ago. I canceled with them and they kept sending automated links with the same anchor text. I even asked Google to remove the bad links years before the penguin update
I have removed many bad links by contacting webmasters and have used disavowal tool twice. 6 Months later still no improvement.
Is it possible that Google needs more time to disavowal bad links ?
What about 301 redirect to a new domain? Anyone ever have long term success with 301.
What about 301 after using the disavowal tool any luck?
What about changing my domain, will it take months for site to move up, anyone with experience trying this?
Let me know any ideas.
Thanks
-
301 redirect to new domain likely wouldnt help, you're bringing the tainted link juice with you, assuming links is the issue.
Most 'experts' think you wont recover from Penguin until the next Penguin update. Its unclear to me if this agency 'kept sending automated links' that you would have been cleared by any update if this process was still ongoing.
Bear in mind Penguin isnt just about links.
Changing domain might be a valid option but it does depend on the site itself, authority, number of spammy links you still have etc.
Not that its much comfort but id also say, remember Google isnt the only source of traffic.
-
It depends on the PR, age, amount of content, rankings and competition, and value of your domain name etc. Sometimes it's easier to move on and start fresh after a site has been nuked, and if you have on going issues like some automation still pushing out links to your site.
I think a simple site should always have a second version ready to launch under a different domain in case they get hit, so you can begin rebuilding right away.
-
you should join the #seochat going on currently on twitter.. it's relevant to your questions. back to the chat --
-
I have had a few clients come to me about bad backlink profiles / google penalties.
Aside from manual removal and the disavow tool, I try and invert the ratio of bad links to good links. This can be a real challenge as there are often thousands of bad links to contend with, but I'm pretty sure that a link from an authoritative website helps to dilute the bad links a great deal.
If you change your domain, you're starting from scratch. But at least you're not fighting a penalty. This is something I'd suggest if there wasn't a single good link in the profile and if the change of domain name wouldn't cripple your business.
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
-
Penguin or coincidence?
We have several country specific sites set up as folders of our main domain. We use hreflang tags to get the relevant site served in each country, with mixed success. In about 60% of searches the US site appears. Beginning in late October our rankings for the US have slowly, but reasonably steadily dropped. Each week we'll see 10 or so keyword rises and 15-30 keywords drop. Generally by 1-3 places. This is much more movement than we were seeing in the months prior to this. Is this a result of penguin, or just coincidence? The US subfolder is the only one which has seen drops overall, the rest have actually improved slightly during this time period. I would expect any impact due to Penguin to effect the whole domain? I've been checking through our backlinks and we do a have a handful of bad links, along with a 100 or so which look a little odd and not completely relevant. I have contacted sites and had some of these removed, and created a disavow list with the worst of the rest. I haven't asked for the site to be re-considered yet. We haven't had any message in webmaster tools re: bad links or similar. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ahyde0 -
Bing seriously hitting our website
Hi I have a strange query, Bing in the last four weeks have been seriously crawling our site, and while at the moment this isn't affecting our servers, coming into the busy time of the year I am just wondering if anyone else is seeing this. They are basically crawling the entire site (including nofollow pages) even though according to Bing Webmaster tools, they know our sitemap. Is anybody else seeing any unusual activity with the Bing bot. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
Hey Mozzers, I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well. My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together? To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other? My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial. A little advice/clarification would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea
Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites. Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities. e.g. Stirling
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
Stirling paintball
Stirling Go Karting
Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns. At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive! Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit0 -
Meta Tag Force Page Refresh - Good or Bad?
I had recently come across a meta tag that could cause a auto refresh on a users browser when implemented. I have been using it for a redesign and was curious if there could be any negative effects for using it, here is the code: All input is appreciated. Ciao, Todd Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichFinnSEO0 -
Are free WordPress templates bad for SEO?
Hello, I often build sites using WordPress. The other day I read an article in which the author stated that the sites built using the free WordPress template are not SEO-friendly. Could someone please confirm this statement? Does this mean that I need to develop themes myself or buy WordPress templates? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Hitting the top of Google Places!
Hi there, I am quite confused about how to get a good rankings on Google Places? It will be much appreciated to get an answers from PROs on following questions: On which websites I need to submit my details in order to rank well? Are there any rules which my website need to follow in order to rank well in GP? **Which techniques are you implementing in order to find proper websites influencing on Google Places? ** If there any 3rd party websites which helps to do so? Could Google Adwords have an impact on my presence in Google Places? Any major mistakes I should to avoid?**** Your detailed answers will help a lot, I am really upset about my knowledge about GP. Cheers, Russel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smokin_ace0 -
Feedback about Bad Behavior Plugin
Hi Guys, I wanted to use this Wordpress plugin to minimize the access of spammers on my site. The plugin is called Bad Behavior. Any feedback with regards to this if its safe to use? Thanks in advance....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trigun0