How to tackle google penguin algorithmic penalty?
-
My Website ranking went down mid of april, I sent a Reconsideration request and the reply was :
“ We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. 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.”
My site was classic asp and i change that to a new word press theme
I change the site structure and created new fresh content on the entire site focusing on user experience.
But still no positive result in the ranking.
I further did a test and created 3 new landing pages that target long tail keywords with low competition.
Once these pages got indexed the start appearing on first page for couple of days and then gradually the started to go down in ranking now they are not in the top 10 pages.
Now someone told me to buy a new domain and start fresh before i follow this route I would like to if anyone could help me should i buy a new domain and start fresh or should i wait till i start getting my ranking back
My link profile according to open site explorer is 190 links from 74 domains and domain authority is 31.
Can anyone help please
-
Regarding the 301s, I originally thought you were talking about redirecting your penalized domain to a new domain. I'm not 100% sure on what you are doing here, but as mentioned by Ian, don't redirect 404s to your home page...create a custom 404 for that use.
If you've got pages you want to get deindexed, you can tell Google in your webmaster tools to removed certain pages from the index.
I didn't have time to do a complete check of your backlinks but you can be pretty certain that if you've been hit by Penguin you've got an issue with backlinks. If you look at your site in OSE, and order the links by anchor text you can see that you've got a high percentage of anchor texted links as opposed to url links. That's where I'd start - get some of those anchor texted links changed to url links for a start.
-
Thanks for your answer,
I think will take few months after i have remove those links.
Will it have any impact if i do some infographics and artciles, the things is how can you make radiator cabinets interesting?
-
Hi Ausaf,
I wouldn't have the home page be the 404 page. Create a separate page. The odds of something getting mixed up are far too high.
Remove any links that are even remotely spammy. That includes all the links you have with 'classic radiator cabinets' as the link text - you're far too optimized to that term and Google's bound to pick up on it, if they haven't already.
-
apart from my brand keyword , I do not have any ranking at all.
used to ranking on first page for keyword
radiator covers
radiator cabinets
but now no where to be found
-
Thanks Marie,
i have removed all 301 redirect from htaccess, Now any 404 page goes to home page with notfound 404.
http://www.classicradiatorcabinets.co.uk/
do you know how long will it take to get these .asp pages to de-index from google,
I cant see any spaming link apart for 2 directories zezoo.com which they have already removed. I am not sure which links to remove?
Thanks again for you help.
-
Well that certainly sounds like Penguin!
We're still really in the infancy of knowing how to recover from Penguin. Most SEOs would tell you (and they're likely right) to get rid of as many spammy links as possible (or change to nofollow, or possibly change anchor text to your url as opposed to a keyword.) And then, it will also help to get good natural links to your site. One thing that is important to know though is that we don't have many good documented stories of recovery so no one really knows exactly how to recover.
If the vast majority of your links are unnatural (i.e. lots of anchor texted keyword links) and you think it would be impossible to get rid of them or change them or dilute them out with good links, then yes, starting over may be the best thing to do.
btw if you think you can recover, then do a cleanup and wait...you can't recover until there is a refresh of the Penguin algorithm.
Whatever you do, remove the 301 from the old domain to the new!!!!! A 301 will carry 90-99% of the link equity from the old domain so you are essentially just pointing those spammy links at your new domain and you'll go under again with the next Penguin refresh.
And one other thing...if you are starting new and if your content is the same as the old domain, make sure you remove the old domain from the index otherwise you'll have duplicate content issues.
-
I had a site tank in January 2012. Non-branded search traffic was down almost 50% that month (the previous 6 months had all been very steady at the higher traffic level) and that has remained ever since.
I did some analysis in Analytics and found the unique keywords driving traffic went down from around 3,800 to 950. Our big keywords and rankings remained and actually got stronger but the long-tail traffic almost completely disappeared.
This type of scenario seems in line with Panda rather than Penguin as other commenters have noted. What would be the best way to address a situation like that?
-
Hi Marie,
Thank you so much for your reply , I wanted to say " good answer" but it wont let me cause i already done 3.
I just checked on google analytics, the traffic drop occurs exactly on 24 april., Organic traffic went from 70 to just 9 visit. One mistake ive done is i already set 301 redirect , should i remove them or should i change the urls, and wait for them to get index again. Just want to try it before starting all over.
Thanks very much for your reply.
-
I'm probably just repeating some of the great answers given so far, but here's my thought.
Are you absolutely sure this is Penguin? Your traffic drop would have to be on or immediately after April 24 if that was the case. If it was prior to April 24 then this is not Penguin so I wouldn't be so quick to go deleting links!
There was a Panda update April 19th and April 27, so if your drop coincides with one of these dates then I'd be doing more research into Panda which is primarily about on site quality, lack of duplication, etc.
How new is your domain? If you were only up and running for a couple of months and then had a traffic drop it's possible you had a honeymoon boost and your site is now back down and that would have nothing to do with a penalty.
>>Once these pages got indexed the start appearing on first page for couple of days and then gradually the started to go down in ranking now they are not in the top 10 pages.
That can be a normal traffic pattern.
Now someone told me to buy a new domain and start fresh before i follow this route I would like to if anyone could help me should i buy a new domain and start fresh or should i wait till i start getting my ranking back
You really need to figure out what the problem is first. If you have a Penguin penalty and you've got too spammy a backlink profile to clean up or dilute with good links then, yes, starting over is a good idea. Don't 301 the old to the new cause you'll end up in the same place. If you've got a Panda issue then you should be able to recover without starting a new domain. Whatever you do, don't just slap the same website up on a new domain.
It's also important to know how big of a traffic drop this is. I've seen people freak out at what would be normal day to day changes or seasonal changes or something like a 5% drop in traffic.
There are other possibilities too such as malware issues with the site. Or a robots.txt or accidental noindexing, etc. etc.
So, to sum up, can you determine the exact day that your drop happened, and how severe was it?
-
Do you know the exact date you traffic went down. You could have been hit by Panda. There were two Panda updates before and after Penguin in April.
Try this analysis to get a better understanding if you were hit by Penguin or Panda:
-
I wish i could do that but i just wanted to know if there a way out of it. Is there any other solution.
-
Thanks for your reply, I did check but i cant see any obvious spam network links coming to my site nor 1000s of links from one domains, there were a few which i have requested them to remove although they have replied that they have removed but it is still showing on webmaster tools.
-
You know what, Ausaf, one of my sites was in a similar situation. In April it tanked, and there was no warnings from Google and no obvious reason for the fall. No deathly hallows links to my site that I could find. It may be that certain sites that were providing you juice were devalued by Google, and caused your drop. Quality link building might help.
I tried everything I could think of for 2 months, tried to get questionable sites to unlink, added new content, fixed a few minor html errors, and nothing budged it. The site just seem to fall further. In mid June I just started a new site with a well chosen domain name, rewrote the content, carefully built a broad variety of new links... and voila! I'm back on page 1 (result #3 currently). I was previously #1, but I tell you after 4 months of this I'm glad to be on page 1.
Sometimes its good just to start over if you're able to.
I know that 2 months is nothing in SEO time, but when you're running a business it's an eternity. I couldn't afford to wait around a year and hope. If the other site comes back, great. If not, we have plan B.
-
Are you sure this is a Penguin penalty? If so, the only fix is to find and remove all incoming links that appear even remotely spammy, and it doesn't sound like you've done this yet. Penguin is all about incoming links, not onsite structure.
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
-
Is Google Filling in Search Forms?
Hi Mozers, Is it true that Google will fill in search forms and thus generate potentially thousands of pages by itself? We have a spike in number of pages indexed and it corresponds with the time we added an advanced search form to the site... Thanks for the advice! Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Google slow to index pages
Hi We've recently had a product launch for one of our clients. Historically speaking Google has been quick to respond, i.e when the page for the product goes live it's indexed and performing for branded terms within 10 minutes (without 'Fetch and Render'). This time however, we found that it took Google over an hour to index the pages. we found initially that press coverage ranked until we were indexed. Nothing major had changed in terms of the page structure, content, internal linking etc; these were brand new pages, with new product content. Has anyone ever experienced Google having an 'off' day or being uncharacteristically slow with indexing? We do have a few ideas what could have caused this, but we were interested to see if anyone else had experienced this sort of change in Google's behaviour, either recently or previously? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | punchseo0 -
Why this site is not hit by google penguin only experts answer please
Hello I know a site which has the following things and it is not hit by google penguin at all and is ranked on first page first link in google.com.pk it has 1.3K total backlinks its has 34 referring domains according to ahrefs the exact match keyword which is ranked in google.com.pk as first position is used in 1.2 K backlinks its DA is 18 and PA is 31 its citation flow is 19 trust flow is 13 targeted exact match keyword is present in Title and description also. Now tell me what is happening here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tanveerayakhan0 -
Is WordPress a Blog in the eyes of Google?
Hi, My online Shop is based on WordPress with the WooCommerce plugin. Now, I have met a SEO guy who told me that's bad in the eyes of Google: Because Google apparently sees my website as a blog and not as a E-Commerce site. Wow, this statement really confused my, since I am working so hard on content and good rankings. Any opinions on this would be appreciated. Best, Robin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
How long before your rankings improved after Penguin?
Those of you that have algorithmic penalties, how long after making changes did you actually see an improvement, or have you ever? I have several sites that tanked after Penguin 2.1 and after doing Link Removal, Diasvaow files and building newer more quality links and adding content, I am STILL not seeing any change in rankings after several months. I have heard from some people it can take up to 6-months for google to even crawl a disavow file. I have also heard no matter what you do it won't matter until Google does another update. I feel like we have made a lot of changes in the right direction, but I don't want to go overboard if nothing is going to matter until another Google Update is done. What are your experiences?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Micro Site Penalty?
I have been carrying out On-Page optimisation only for a client www.shade7.co.nz. After three months or so I have been getting some great results, improving to the top three positions for at least 30 of 45 keywords targeted. Couple of more tweaks and I would be a very happy camper. Disaster overnight! Rankings CRASH! Unbeknown to me the client a month or so back decided to link just about every product/link on a micro site he owns (www.shademakers.com/ ) plus one other site he owns. Explorer I think discovered over 350 back-links (follow) from these sites! As this is a site he owns and it is targeting the same keywords I presume this falls into the EVIL bucket of SEO. Two part question do you believe I am correct that this is the reason for this rankings crash and what would be the best way to resolve this! server-side 301 redirect for the micro site? Delete the micro site (drastic measure) Remove all the links other than maybe one in the contact page saying visit our other site shade7 other options? The client or I have not received any bad link Emails from Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Moving-Web-SEO-Auckland0 -
Why, oh why does Google hate us?
My URL is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | candylotus
www.drupalgeeks.org I have tried my very best to cover all the usual SEO items.... But nothing... We are a legitimate company offering a legitimate service. Ideally we would come up in the results for: "Drupal Developers"
"Drupal Development" and
"Drupal Designers" Yet, we cannot break the top 50 for any of these.... We have:
Optimized Meta Tags
Written Quality Content
Maintained a Social Presence in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, and Google Plus
Blogged with some consistency
Guest Blogged
Canonicalization
And dozens of other things And we are all around nice people and a good company....... Why oh why? Can anyone take a look and see if there is something blatantly obvious I am missing? Are we using "drupal" too much?? Thank you in advanced for any assistance. Candice1 -
Google Places not appearing
is it possible to be sandboxed for a google places page? one of our clinics has a places page, and it was doing fine (http://www.google.com/maps/place?cid=5542269234389030356) but now whenever we set our location to trinity,fl and try to search for weight loss, weight loss trinity, etc.. it doesnt come up. it only comes up if we search medi weight loss trinity. also, when we go into our google places dashboard and try to edit the pictures, it doesnt show the same pictures on the actual locations page. for example, in our dashboard we have 5 pictures, but on the actual places page, 3 pictures are showing (none of which are in our dashboard). any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AustinBarton0