Please help on this penalized site!
-
OK, this is slowly frying my brain and would like some clarification from someone in the know, we have posted multiple reconsideration requests the regular "site violates googles quality guidelines" .."look for unnatural links etc" email back in March 2012,
I came aboard the business in August 2012 to overcome bad SEO companies work. So far i have filled several disavow requests by domain and cleared over 90% of our backlink profile which where all directory, multiple forum spam links etc from WMT, OSE and Ahrefs and compiled this to the disavow tool, as well as sending a google docs shared file in our reconsideration request of all the links we have been able to remove and the disavow tool, since most where built in 2009/2010 a lot where impossible to remove.
We managed to shift about 12 - 15% of our backlink profile by working very very hard too remove them. The only links that where left where quality links and forum posts created by genuine users and relevant non spam links As well as this we now have a high quality link profile which has also counteracted a lot of the bad "seo" work done by these previous companies, i have explained this fully in our reconsideration request as well as a massive apology on behalf of the work those companies did, and we are STILL getting generic "site violates" messages, so far we have spent in excess of 150 hours to get this penalty removed and so far Google hasn't even batted an eyelid.
We have worked SO hard to combat this issue it almost feels almost very personal, if Google read the reconsideration request they would see how much work we have done too remove this issue. If anyone can give any updates or help on anything we have missed i would appreciate it, i feel like we have covered every base!!
Chris
-
Ha, okay, got it!
Go after some long tail content and start adding some value to the site and you should have a broader scope and some pages that will rank on their own merit. Gives you something constructive to do and some possible link targets!
-
Absolutely, our rankings have been static since i started so i hope we will see some results soonish will keep you posted.
Chris
Ps - Peter owns the business and set our Moz account up! i do the work! hah
-
Hey Chris (peter? sorry)
Yeah, will be interesting, every case is unique I figure but certainly, if you get rid of the problems you can at least concentrate on moving forwards.
Keep me posted.
-
thanks Marcus, we have whilst trying to remove the bad replace with good and get white hat all the way, so my biggest worry now is too see how much recovery actually happens, the general consensus seems to be anywhere between 10 - 90 days!
Chris
-
Hey Peter, that's great news, keep us posted on how that works out from a traffic perspective and would love a poke around in your analytics once the dust has settled.
Cheers,
Marcus
-
Just an update Marcus - this morning we got our "manual spam penalty revoked" notice so lets see if rankings return.
-
so far copyscape/plagspotter has shown nothing, website has been changed since the warning came in and a lot of content was changed. i feel that one issue might be down to the enjin.com list of forums that run one forum but span hundreds of websites with different layouts (horrid spam that wasnt actually created by bad seo's!) ive been asking for ages to get this removed and its all been filed into our disavow. Like i said i think 90%+ of our backlinks across WMT/ahrefs/OSE have been requested to disavow.
None of our blog content has been duplicated but this is new and didnt exist when the unnatural warning was issued, its just so frustrating how i feel we have covered every angle and you find most of your working life becoming a minion to the google algorithmn!
-
Hi Brian, will definately look at this thanks, i know that our duplicate issues across the site are slim and other onpage things - massive increase in site loading times etc etc are going well, thanks
-
Hi Marcus, i agree, sure, in detail:
-
built high quality natural link profile with varied anchor text since Aug
-
provided a text document of removed links (about 12 - 15% of WMT/OSE/Ahrefs link profile) in recon request
-
provided a list of every directory and bad looking forum links, irrelevant websites in disavow tool by domain:
-
made a simple text copy on google docs of disavow in recon request.
-
apologised on behalf of work done by previous companies
-
promised all future work will be compliant to webmaster standards.
I have ran several audits since working with Palicomp, everything from canonicalisation to crawl errors to dupe content and ive found a small amount of source code duplicates (down to cubecarts awful cms) but not much else
-
-
Hey Chris
Often, it would seem they want to see a continued effort on your part to clean up and the link profile still looks pretty stinky in OSE. That said, I appreciate, it's almost impossible to get many links removed so you can only do so much.
It may be that you just have to keep trying, keep cleaning up, keep emailing, send letters, make phonecalls etc and just show even more willing before they will let you out of penalty jail.
Have you had a professional audit done with regards to the problems on the site? Have you looked at duplication etc?
Can you detail what you have done in your reconsideration requests?
Marcus
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
-
Penalized and how to recover
Hey guys One of our sites was penalised from a while ago and we use to rank page 1 for our keywords and now w can't be found. Is there a way to recover from this? Also, I came across Rands video about site architecture whilst google were teaching us to generate backlinks, and spammy anchor text what would your suggestion be to recover from this? Any ideas? Here is the site http://free-love-psychic.com/ Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
How is my 301 redirected site stealing rankings from the main site?
Hello, I have a site, drhobelt.com, that 301 redirects to the main site, drhonow.com. Not only is drhobelt.com still indexed, but it recently stole rankings from drhonow.com for "decompression belt" related terms. What could be causing this? How do I reclaim the rankings for drhonow.com? Thanks for reading!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Merging 11 community sites into 1 regional site
I am merging 11 real estate community sites into 1 regional site and don't really know what type of redirect should I use for the homepage?, for instance: www.homepage.com redirect to www.regionalsite.com/community-page Should I 301 this redirect? If yes, how could I 301 redirect a homepage to an internal page in my new site? Cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mbulox0 -
Our quilting site was hit by Panda/Penguin...should we start a second "traffic" site?
I built a website for my wife who is a quilter called LearnHowToMakeQuilts.com. However, it has been hit by Panda or Penguin (I’m not quite sure) and am scared to tell her to go ahead and keep building the site up. She really wants to post on her blog on Learnhowtomakequilts.com, but I’m afraid it will be in vain for Google’s search engine. Yahoo and Bing still rank well. I don’t want her to produce good content that will never rank well if the whole site is penalized in some way. I’ve overly optimized in linking strongly to the keywords “how to make a quilt” for our main keyword, mainly to the home page and I think that is one of the main reasons we are incurring some kind of penalty. First main question: From looking at the attached Google Analytics image, does anyone know if it was Panda or Penguin that we were “hit” by? And, what can be done about it? (We originally wanted to build a nice content website, but were lured in by a get rich quick personality to rather make a “squeeze page” for the Home page and force all your people through that page to get to the really good content. Thus, our avenge time on site per person is terrible and Pages per Visit is low at: 1.2. We really want to try to improve it some day. She has a local business website, Customcarequilts.com that did not get hit. Second question: Should we start a second site rather than invest the time in trying to repair the damage from my bad link building and article marketing? We do need to keep the site up and running because it has her online quilting course for beginner quilters to learn how to quilt their first quilt. We host the videos through Amazon S3 and were selling at least one course every other day. But now that the Google drop has hit, we are lucky to sell one quilting course per month. So, if we start a second site we can use that to build as a big content site that we can use to introduce people to learnhowtomakequilts.com that has Martha’s quilting course. So, should we go ahead and start a new fresh site rather than to repair the damage done by my bad over optimizing? (We’ve already picked out a great website name that would work really well with her personal facebook page.) Or, here’s a second option, which is to use her local business website: customcarequilts.com. She created it in 2003 and has had it ever since. It is only PR 1. Would this be an option? Anyway I’m looking for guidance on whether we should pursue repairing the damage and whether we should start a second fresh site or use an existing site to create new content (for getting new quilters to eventually purchase her course). Brad & Martha Novacek rnUXcWd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradNovi0 -
Will Google penalize a site that had many links pointing to it with utm codes?
I want to track conversions using utm parameters from guest blog posts on sites other than my own site. Will Google penalize my site for having a bunch of external articles pointing to one page with unique anchor text but utm code? e.g. mysite.com/seo-text?utm_campaign=guest-blogs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wepayinc0 -
A Site in Flash to Optimize
Hello, I have to understand if this site www.spacemilanmodels.com.pt can be optimize since the entire website is in flash wich is not good for optimizacion. What do you guys suggest? Recommendations? Is it possible only with link-building? Tks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Scapers and Other Sites Outranking
Post panda, there is definitely more talk about scrapers or other (more authoritative) sites outranking the original content creators in the SERPS. The most common way this problem is addressed (from what I've seen) is by rewriting the content and try your hardest to be the first one to be indexed or just ignoring it from an on page standpoint and do more link dev. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to address? Should site owners be looking deeper into their analytics and diagnostics before doing the rewrites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0