Was I hit by panda or penguin?
-
My site, graciousbridal.com was hit pretty hard by google at the end of April. I actually noticed our traffic decreasing around February, then towards the end of April, it got really bad. Our sales this may were half of what they were in may 2011. We have never done any black or gray hat seo, wouldn't even know how to. I know in the past we did blog commenting, but changed up our keywords so it wasn't all the same, maybe we didn't change it enough?? We have another very similar site that I'm now wondering if we were penalized because they are too similar. We always have changed up the copy, but they have most of the same products. This second site barely gets traffic or sales and has about half of the items graciousbridal does. But, I'm wondering now if it's to similar and that is why we were penalized. I can't figure out what we did wrong to have this big of a drop. I really need help with this as this is supposed to be our busiest season of the year. Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated..
-
Hi James, Thanks for responding. We hired an SEO person to help us at the beginning of last year, that ended up not working out. I know she was working on link building, and it seems like she must have left comments on irrelevant blogs.. What do you recommend in this situation, focus time on getting high quality links or trying to get the bad ones removed? And is blog commenting still okay to do on blogs that are relevant to our industry, or does google see that as spammy? Thanks! Audrey
-
I had a quick look over your link profile, I feel you have been hit by Penguin.
I notice you have been doing some ok link building in terms of using varied anchor text in your link profile,
But I also notice you have been targeting some lower quality directories for your dedicated page "<a class="clickable title link-pivot expanded" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">personalized wedding favors"</a>
For example I notive you have a link on this directorie: coloradosph.org
http://coloradosph.org/index.php?s=A&c=363&p=17
Google has totally de indexed the URL for this low quality directory, If you take a similar sample accross more of these directories I see more like this.
Also in regards to your "Blog Comments" I notice some poor quality links from this area example:
this looks like it is a blog comment on a link network [comment made 28th Feb 2011), I mean their are 100s of other spammy comments this isn't really going to do any thing apart from have a negative impact on your SEO.
http://mommies.genuineinteractive.com/blog/post/Connecting-with-Alpha-Moms.aspx
To future proof your strategy you need to target higher quality link building strategies and do not let the lower quality stuff work.
Google has been very harsh after the last update, work done by agency's 5 years ago can get hit I have seen it over and over, from my experience "Quality" will be the winner in the end
-
Penguin was released on April 24th 2012. If you GA show a decrease on that date, then it's Penguin.
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
-
Penguin Strategy Idea
Hello, So while I sit and wait for Penguin to hopefully ease up on my site, would it be smart to create a new site and then forward the old penguin hit site to it after the dust clears and any issues are better? I have heard some people say you never recover from an algo penalty? While others say to wait it out. So just curious what you think? Would you ditch a site that is not super followed or popular? in the attempt to create a site with no bad backlinks and start fresh? Thank you for your thoughts
Algorithm Updates | | Berner0 -
Im I being hit by hummingbird?
Hello, Our website is a private equity firm database, privateequityfirms.com. We rank well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms but unfortunately we have been losing ranking in our main keyword and url "private equity firms" .We have ranked as high as 3rd under wikipedia in recent months. The only real changes we have made are too the sitemap that is auto generated every time some thing is changed in the database. Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? im i being hit by hummingbird. Thank you! MozAnalyticsPDF115_zpsddec64fa.png
Algorithm Updates | | Nicktaylor10 -
Penguin Update and Long Tail Keywords
Since the Penguin update, organic traffic for our site; oxygenconcentratorstore.com
Algorithm Updates | | chuck-layton
has dropped almost 25%. The thing I cannot figure out is that when I compare April 1<sup>st</sup> to May 15<sup>th</sup> (before the update) and June 1<sup>st</sup> to July 15<sup>th</sup> (after); 8 of our top keywords are up. Our 2 main keywords are up 15% and 11%. Where we lost most of our traffic is from our longtail keywords. We have almost 1000 longtail keyword phrases that we got visits from in the April/May period that we did not get in the June/July period. Is there a reason why our top keywords would continue to improve while we most of the longtail keywords?? If Google penalized us, won’t all of our keywords be dropping and just not the longtail. Any help/info would be awesome. Thanks.0 -
Lost and confused after Penguin!
I own an EMD which was hit by google penguin. I lost my #1 position to Google US SERP and went to #5 for the keyword which applies to the EMD. What I have tried so far is deleting the exact anchor text links from the footers of my c-block sites. That did not seem to help because i did not gain any position from that change. I also altered my meta title, description and keywords because they were spamming a bit. Things did not improved. My Links w/ Exact Anchor Text is at 5%, Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text at 3% The web pages that are above me are to 0% to both categories because they are not showing up with their main page. What is going on? The thing that confuses me the most is that i am also targeting for two other markets, Australia and Canada. In Canada I have maintained my #1 and to Australia I lost my first position falling to #2. I did not receive any message to my webmaster tools account and never made any black hat link building. Is the EMD fact the problem, but why not for other markets except US? Penguin has run to other markets(CA, AU) as well becuase i have seen a drop to other keywords and also to my traffic. Really what do you think?
Algorithm Updates | | Tz_Seo0 -
How to Link a Network of Sites w/o Penguin Penalties (header links)
I work for a network of sites that offer up country exclusive content. The content for the US will be different than Canada, Australia, Uk, etc.… but with the same subjects. Now to make navigation easy we have included in the header of every page a drop down that has links to the other countries, like what most of you do with facebook/twitter buttons. Now every page on every site has the same link, with the same anchor text. Example: Penguins in Canada Penguins in Australia Penguins in the USA Because every page of every site has the same links (it's in the header) the "links containing this anchor text" ratio is through the roof in Open Site Explorer. Do you think this would be a reason for penguin penalization? If you think this would hurt you, what would you suggest? no follow links? Remove the links entirely and create a single page of links? other suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | BeTheBoss0 -
Food for thought: The Penguin Catch-22
I've been reading about and helping a lot of people who were hit by the Penguin update over the last couple of days, and the update seems to be accomplishing what Google intended it to accomplish... it's scaring people straight. I've picked up two new clients this week who now only want to practice "Good SEO" and "Do it the right way." This is a good thing for me and for the quality of the net, don't get me wrong. It does make me a little nervous though that the SEO industry is going to be tarnished a bit. Google is making a pretty clear statement with Penguin, which I think boils down to "Don't do anything other than create good content, provide accurate descriptions, and establish good connections to SEO your site... or beware ." (other than technical stuff - 301/ canonical / crawler management / etc). So riddle me this Batman... As a proud Journeyman, how is the followed backlink on my SEOMoz profile page going to appear to Google? This is an SEO site with SEO content and SEO tools and SEO in the URL. The site listed below the first followed URL on my profile is an SEO site that's in development. So there's a link to my site and every bit of context around it screams SEO. But... it is a very nice link indeed, I really do like it, and this is a white-hat kind of place. Do you think Google will start penalizing sites with inbound links from pages that are related to SEO, even if the page promotes respectable tactics? If so, I'll be having nightmares about a very round Danny DeVito with a pointy nose and creepy hands chasing me through the sewers for weeks to come...
Algorithm Updates | | Anthony_NorthSEO1 -
Has Panda update made you lose your ranks but put them back again?
I noticed recently that one of the main sites I run dropped ranks quite heavily across the board. I then noticed that with very link building during the time that the ranks were down (about 1 month) that my ranks went back up again really quickly. All this with very little link building effort, and its the same link building campaign I've been running for a while. So I'm wondering has any been experiencing ranking flux between jan and feb? I know that people reckon if you fix some things your ranks can improve again, but I barley fixed anything on the site and yet it dropped some keywords from 1st page to 3rd page and then back to 3rd page; some keywords went back to original position some were lower but non were higher.
Algorithm Updates | | upick-1623910 -
If you got hit by a google update what you do first?
I have not been known the Panda. My site statistics knows it. I manage to endure and get back where i felt everytime with change of design, ad placement, content... I am very curious: if i did nothing, my site will turn back? why i kicked in every big update? Simply if you get hit by update, without any act, could your site healed?
Algorithm Updates | | MaxCrandale0