New to seomoz, scared to death after last update
-
man, I know I am opening the flood gates for some serious debates, so let's just not and say we did. All I want is for some people to help me out.
My site is www.ontracparts.com we sell heavy equipment parts.
So we were steadily increasing in traffic and rank, before penguin. I had ordered a few backlinks from a semi spammy source (meaning that they used spun content)
Like I said our rank was increasing pre-penguin, and I stopped ordering. We seemed to hold our postitions after I stopped ordering (for about 2 weeks everything remained the same)
So, I ordered more of them. Then penguin dropped and our rankings and traffic remained the same. for a little while that is. Soon the rankings started to drop.
Probably a direct result of those links right?? Well here is the weird thing.. Traffic is slowly increasing again now that I ordered more links.
Rankings drop, but traffic increases? what the heck?
what should i be doing now, post-penguin... just writing and publishing content on the site everyday??
How do I go about getting links if I can't just buy them anymore??
I should also mention that there is practically ZERO guest blogging opportunities.. I say that because there is nobody blogging about heavy equipment right now. Not that I could find anyway.
-
You should also consider getting listed on some of the SEOmoz directories. For instance the Better Business Bureau passes a lot of PR.
-
Thanks for your answer David, I haven't really thought about checking my analytics for bigger than 1 month trends. (The Google analytics standard)
Good point with macroeconomic forces too, because our industry is definitely affected by them. The thing is though, I am using "rank tracker" on firefox, and saw the rankings drop, so it does seem to be something directly related to Google's trust in my site.
I also didn't realize that penguin affected a lot less queries, but I hope i'm not one of the 3%
From this point I am definitely moving forward by only focusing on creating content. At least for now.
Later I will start thinking more about attracting link bait and the more advanced white hat strategies. (anyone know of some common / simple ones to consider when publishing content??)
Another side note that I am wondering about, what are peoples thoughts on directory links?
-
Best Penguin Solution = Take a deep breath, check your Google Webmaster inbox, and keep an eye on your rankings for a few more weeks.
If you're still indexed and you didn't get a warning notice, you're probably fine. Your traffic changes may have more to do with the fact that your site isa niche site in an industry that is susceptible to macroeconomic forces.
My site is the same way. I'm targeting potential consumer bankruptcy filers in the Seattle area. My analytics data swings form week to week. If you've been tracking with analytics for at least a year, then your best metric is year over year traffic comparison, i.e. April 2011 vs. April 2012, or a specific week in April 2011 vs April 2012.
If your traffic is steadily declining and business cycles or year over year comparisons don't explain it, then you should consider link building and link removal strategies.
Penguin freaked a lot of people out, myself included, because they had lots of directory backlinks from back in the day that are still hanging around. I have about 600. Two of my biggest competitors have 3,000+. My biggest competitor has 10,000+ links from random directories, they do reciprocal linking, and they still outrank my on two of the biggest keywords in our industry.
Based on my analytics tracking, my numbers haven't changed; and based on my competitive analysis, my competitors haven't lost position. If you take a look at the April 24 announcement from Google you'll see that Penguin affects a relatively small percentage of queries - 3.1% - as opposed to Panda which affected about 12%. 3.1% of all English language web queries is not that much, considering Google's search volume.
In my opinion, Penguin is a huge warning shot. If you were one of the worst offenders you got hit hard or you got a warning notice. But for the rest of us, we're officially on notice about artificial link building and web spam. My guess is that in the next few algo changes Google is going to take an unfriendly look at webmasters that continue grey hat/black hat link building after Penguin.
-
I'm with Joel. These are all solid ideas that you should follow. One of my favorites is to look at Analytics and see if there are any phrases that jump out as longtail opportunities. Then write a blog post about them. Also, you can create infographs about the applications of heavy machinery, share pictures of your merc on Pinterest (bet nobody is doing that yet!) and generally be TAGFEE, you will be in great shape!
-
I agree with Joel. Don't panic. If you're scared because you think you'll be penalized for doing something spammy then don't do it.
You will succeed by providing valuable content to your prospective customers. This actually works.
-
Welcome to SeoMoz, don't panic, what I would do is write content on your site or blog several times per week. Doesn't have to be everyday. I would promote those writings on all the social networks. Then I would also engage in some community charities and then do press releases to your local papers. This will get you links of high pr value. I would also arrange for talks at your local community college about the benefits of your industry and try to get the school paper to run an online story with a link to your site. Now you will have an edu link. I would also contact local bloggers and site owners and see if they are willing to write a story about your industry and link to your site. Now you have local bloggers spreading the word about you with valuable links. I can go on for days on various strategies but this is the meat and potatoes. You will do well. I hope this helps and good luck.
-
Rankings drop and traffic increases, most logical explanation is because you're ranking for more keywords or other sources are sending traffic. Check analytics, see how people are finding you, for what keywords etc.
If you have no sudden drops in traffic, it's unlikey the issue is Penguin.
However, moving forward, buying cheap links, from spammy sources, is building a foundation that won't get you far.
Before building links, do as much research as you can. You need a solid strategy to achieve long lasting ranks and avoid 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
-
Transferring inbound links to new domains
Hi, I've recently changed domains and have redirected all traffic from the old site to the new one. The problem is that none of my built links for the old domain are showing up for the new domain (I use moz.com/researchtools/ose/) I've read a few articles saying it's best practice to get in touch with the people that are linking to your old website to let them know the address has changed. When I search for my old domain using moz.com/researchtools/ose/ it says there is 0 established links. I know this isn't the case as I've visited one of the sites that does still list this domain. Is there a way of getting a list of my old domain's backlinks so I can contact them? I didn't make a list before redirecting. Thank you.
Link Building | | charliedavi0 -
Question on getting new site with poor URLs indexed
For the website www.misslovegirls.com , with URLs like http://www.misslovegirls.com/goods.php?id=3706 is there any chance of getting these URL's indexed? Thanks!
Link Building | | onlinemktg10 -
New world order
Hello all I see many talk about it but still I feel that the conversation is full of alogans and cliches are flying around, so here goes. In the not too far distant past I could get sites climbing and getting more traffic just by gettinhg simple links from sites. do that on a monthly basis, and see results. Now it is better for end users and tougher for us SEO guys. we need quality content and strategic postings. I like the new way and the higher quality it brings. As many of you probably expieienced getting clients actively engaged is really hard and most times clients are too busy. We need the involvement to succeed, we need quality content and valid places to post (mostly blogs). My questions are most budgets are not adjusted by clients and as such it creates a problem getting qualuty content. How do you still stay profitable? How did you adjust? Do you feel that much more actuale work on clients' project is needed and as such profits are declining. How di you reacts? what are the adjustment you made Thanks Guy C
Link Building | | ciznerguy0 -
When's Linkscape update going to go live?
I've been keeping an eye on the Linkscape update calendar and am a bit confused! There was meant to be an update yesterday, but Open Site Explorer is still showing "Last index update: 8/14/12". When will the new data reach OSE? Been doing lots of link building and want to know if my efforts have been worth it! Any info greatly appreciated. Thanks! Alex
Link Building | | reddogmusic1 -
New to all this, any suggestion will be appreciated
I operate an Airport Parking Agency or Secure Car Parking. Any ideas on keywords would be greeeeeeeat 😉
Link Building | | ginag0 -
Panda Update: Isn't a link still a link?
I was doing some link building and some SEO's said that the Panda update affected many websites. I am going to use eZineArticles.com as my example. EzineArticles was affected by the Panda update and does not show up in the SERPs as much as before. But they still have doFollow Links coming from the articles I am submitting. QUESTION: Regardless if EzineArticles was affected by the Panda Update, isn't a "Follow Link" still a "Follow Link" OR am I completely wasting my time on this devalued website? Edit: Yes I know a PR 0 page is not as valuable as a PR 9 page. I am asking from the standpoint of the affected Panda Update domains overall.
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0 -
How to target keywords on a new site?
I have a site I launched a few months back, and the niche isn't all that competitive. After a bit of work the domain is now sitting near the bottom of page 2 on google but it's number 2 in yahoo search. I have been manually building the links but they are all targeted to just one keyword, and mainly have the same link text. Will this look suspicious to google, and should I be spreading my anchor text over different keywords? Or is the reason Im ranking so well in yahoo be because they are just picking up more backlinks? 23 from yahoo but only 9 from google.
Link Building | | timscullin1 -
Link-building / panda update!
Hi Mozers. WHat do you think, after panda-update, which is the best strategy to build links on Content, or blogspots, and it to website with a minimum PA40 and DA30 . . in which place is better to place, at the begining of article, or at the end of article, tell us some tips, if you are experiences on this section! Thanks,
Link Building | | leadsprofi0