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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Posting same content to different high authority websites
Let's say 1 article piece is highly relevant to multiple states and we pitch this article across the different domains in those states. Each article piece will be tweaked to localize the content. I understand that Google devalues links coming from low quality, websites that are spun up, but what about links that are basically the same content (but localized), across different high authority domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Tool to help find blog / news pages?
Do you guys know of any tools where if I have a list of Url's it can help find blog and news pages and let me know which ones have these.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Help with duplicate pages
Hi there, I have a client who's site I am currently reviewing prior to a SEO campaign. They still work with the development team who built the site (not my company). I have discovered 311 instances of duplicate content within the crawl report. The duplicate content appears to either be 1, 2, or 3 versions of the same pages but with differing URL's. Example: http://www.sitename.com http://sitename.com http://sitename.com/index.php And other pages follow a similar or same pattern. I suppose my question is mainly what could be causing this and how can I fix it? Or, is it something that will have to be fixed by the website developers? Thanks in advance Darren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODarren0 -
Delay release of content or fix after release
I am in the midst of moving my site to a new platform. As part of that I am reviewing each and every article for SEO - titles, URLs, content, formatting/structure, etc, etc. I have about 200 articles to move across and my eventual plan is to look at each article and update for these factors. I have all the old content moved across to the new server as-is (the old server is still the one to which my domain's DNS records point). At a high level I have two choice: Point DNS to the new server, which will expose the same content (which isn't particularly SEO-friendly) and then work through each article, fixing the various elements to make them more user friendly. Go through each article, fixing content, structure, etc and THEN update DNS to point to the new server. Obviously the second option adds time before I can switch across. I'd estimate it will take me a few weeks to get through the articles. Option 1 allows me to switch pretty soon and then start going through the articles and updating them. An important point here is the new articles already have new (SEO-friendly) URLs and titles on the new server. I have 301 redirections in place pointing from the old to new URLs. So, it's "only" the content of each article that will be changing on the new server, rather than the URLs, etc. So, I'd be interested in any suggestions on the best approach - move across to the new server now and then fix content or wait till all the content is done and then switch to the new server. Thanks. Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Penguin Update, what I've noticed
Hi Guys, I have spent 2 days looking at our site and competitors after the update, 3 things jump out straight away for us. I am in the travel industry and still on the first page of the major KW's but in the 8 to 10 region, was 2 to 5. 1. The sites that have moved up both have shops selling merchandise which is not the main focus of their site, anyone else spotted sites with a eCommerce section have benefited from latest update? 2. Sites we have links from, although they look like a travel sites, maybe be themed differently by Google. Anybody know a good tool that will help determine what theme a site is? Images, design and content don't always seem to be a good indicator, I think back links to the domain has a big effect on the site you get the link from. Any tool that will help speed up this process would be great. We need more quality links from travel sites (or at least what google thinks is a travel related site). 3. The competitors who have done well seem to have 45% links to home page, we only had 28% so we are focusing now on links to home page. We don't really stand out from the top 10 sites in any other way in terms of other indicators like branded keywords vrs money making kw's. Any thoughts or feedback would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
Hi Mozzers, We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint. Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up? Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Social Buttons Help SEO, 2 Questions...
Howdy Guys, I noticed a weird thing over the weekend - our main keyword has been hit pretty hard by penguin and we had dropped down to #79. On Friday I decided to change some on-page optimisation and changed the title tag and some tags. When I've ran my rank tracker this morning we have jumped up to #62... Has anyone else noticed just a simple change boosts rankings? Second Questions We took all our social buttons off the website back in January as no-body was using them but from a few recent reports I've seen having the buttons on the site help organic rankings... Is this true? Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Is is better to write something on Squidoo or do a guest post?
I've got a blog that has a good follower count, moz score, twitter fan base and PR offer to let me do a guest post, as long as the approve it. Is it better to do that vs. a Lens on Squidoo? I'm thinking the blog post would be best but Squidoo has huge domain authority. Would that get the content out there more and hopefully get others to link to it? And yes I know I should be writing something for both. I probably will but let's just pretend I'm not going to. I'm like everyone else, too little time and too much to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAARON0