Should We Pull The Plug On This Site?
-
I am helping a retailer out with their site. They were hit hard with the Penguin update, and traffic has dropped by about 75%. Here are the stats:
-
It is fairly new, has been up for about 3 years.
-
Has partial match domain name
-
Is nearly fully indexed with over 4K pages
-
Has NOT received an unnatural link message from Google, so no manual penalty.
-
Has had most keywords BURIED in the search results.
-
Link profile: Has done about 50-100 blog comments, 500 directory submissions, 800 social bookmarks, 5-6 press releases, 300 article submissions (most removed), about 30-50 guest blog posts.
I am thinking it may have just been hit because of aggressive use of anchor text as opposed to massive spamming. Then again, the site has never really added great content and the product pages have no unique content.
Any thoughts?
-
-
Thanks. I've watched the video before but it's worth reviewing. Still seems a bit strange that someone can violate terms of service which G never bothered to enforce for years and get slammed with "Double Secret Probatiion" while a malicious site can clean up and eventually get the penalty lifted. No doubt a malicious site manual penalty should result in a long time in the penalty box but at least it's obvious what to fix. There doesn't seem to be a reliable consensus or even many case studies on garden variety Penguin recoveries yet. Not knowing what Dean Wormer wants me to change is irritating.
-
InHouseSEO - It's not an e-commerce site. (It's a blog with a couple of hundred posts many of which need pruning but many of which are high informative and written by someone with substantial experience in the subject.)
Sounds like you're telling me the best gamble is put in the work on this blog to try to grow the legit links so that the bad ones dip below the "tipping point" which prompts the Penguin attack. Have you had success with this tactic?
The home page appears to be penalized b/c of keyword rich text from relevant blog comments on mostly relevant blogs/pages. (It's also quite possible it's just a rather severe devaluation 30 or so spots in the SERPs for the EMD keyword). Other pages are hit or miss but the stronger pages (high bounce but very high times on pages) are beginning to return to some of their former strength (probably 50% of peak traffic).
Site traffic declined just before the 25th (the date that is associated with Panda 3.5) and resulted in a 20% hit. After Panda 3.5, the G traffic dove steadily (which I assume is Penguin added to the mix). Traffic is now off by around 2/3 without excluding the Bing traffic. (Have probably seen 15 -20% improvement recently with no new posts and only added one authorative directory link (Nat'l Trade Assoc. picked up the blog).
I just reread all of the comments in the thread you linked to. (Never received a warning in WMT so I assume the penalty is algo.)
Reading your comments, it sounds like you recomment attempting to remove any blog comments that I created. (I don't expect much success based on what people are sharing.
If my pet Penquin is algorhythmic and isn't scheduled to lift anytime in the next several months, should I try to guest blog my way out of the penalty? (Assume I have access to decent releveant indy blogs that are low authority but extremely legit.)
Thanks for the reminder to re-read the thread with you and Egol.
-
Do you have an e-commerce site? Is the site as a whole hit, or is it certain keywords/pages?
I would be careful with removing links, unless they are really spammy. You might do more harm than good.
I wrote about this here:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/using-dripable-to-build-url-links-too-dilute-link-profile
Anyways, good luck.
-
InHouseSEO - this is a GREAT question. I wish there were more discussion of realistic case studies like this one rather than so much "focus" on negative SEO and a handful of high authority sites that were probably hit by mistake.
The consensus seems to be that you can file for lifting a penalty IF you can show you removed bad links AND document the efforts you made to remove the bad links that remain despite your efforts.
Matt Cutts appears to say you're more screwed if the penalty is algorhythmic. Huh? Buy BMR links, remove them and escape the penalty G imposed on your site for 50 -100 presumably manual and relevant blog comments? Gimmee a break!
The 50 - 100 blog comments are probably going to be the worst of the lot to attempt to remove. Have you had any sucess removing the trash directories? You might be able to out grow the penalty by developing new links so that the number of suspicious (or bad) links falls below the tipping point. On a recent WBF, Danny Sullivan opined that Penguin is just a devaluation of the bad links. (Not my opinion but it's an interesting opinion.) No one has shared results but some people have suggested combining removing links with developing new strong ones.
Penguin is bizarre. Some of my pages are (very) slowly returning to their former top positions even when some of the bad links point to them. New pages with extensive content (think 2,000 words of unique/expert content) were among the first 2 - 3 to cover the event but now rank around 120. (Ouch).
I share your suspicion that for many of our sites, it's aggressive use of anchor text. Developing non-aggressive links may dig us out. Would love to hear from anyone who had tried this and what results they acheived.
-
if it was an algorithmic hit check out this video
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
-
My indexed site URL removed from google search without get any message or Manual Actions???
On Agust 2 or 3.. I'm not sure about the exact date...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | newwaves
The main URL of my website https://new-waves.net/ had been completely removed from Google search results! without getting any messages or Manual Actions on search console ?? but I'm still can find some of my site subpages in search results and on Google local maps results when I tried to check it on google
info:new-waves.net >> no results
site:new-waves.net >> only now I can see the main URL in results because I had submitted it again and again to google but it might be deleted again today or tomorrow as that happen before last few days
100% of all ranked keywords >> my site URL new-waves.net had been completely removed from all results! but I'm still can see it on maps on some results I never get any penalties to my site on Google search console. I noticed some drops on some keywords before that happens (in June and July) but it all of it was related to web design keywords for local Qatar, but all other keywords that related to SEO and digital marketing were not have any changes and been on top My site was ranked number 1 on google search results for "digital marketing qatar" and some other keywords, but the main URL had been removed from 100% of all search results. but you can still see it on the map only. I just tried to submit it again to Google and to index it through google search console tool but still not get any results, Recently, based on google console, I found some new links but I have no idea how it been added to links of my website:
essay-writing-hub.com - 9,710
tiverton-market.co.uk - 252
facianohaircare.com - 48
prothemes.biz - 44
worldone.pw - 2
slashdot.org - 1
onwebmarketing.com - 1 the problem is that all my high PR real links deleted from google console as well although it still have my site link and it could be recognized by MOZ and other sites! Can any one help to know what is the reason?? and how can I solve this issue without losing my previous ranked keywords? Can I submit a direct message to google support or customer service to know the reason or get help on this issue? Thanks & Regards0 -
Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?
I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SnapComms0 -
Hacked site vs No site
So I have this website that got hacked with cloaking and Google has labeled it as such in the SERPs. With due reason of coarse. My question is I am going to relaunch an entirely new redesigned website in less than 30 days, do I pull the hacked site down until then or leave it up? Which option is better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Why don't I outrank this site?
Hi Mozzers, I'm mystified. Why doesn't our site www.bosphorusyacht.com (ranked 15) outrank this site www.bosphorustour.com (ranked 5 and 6) for the keyword "bosphorus cruise"? Particularly for US based searches. We have far more links, shares, higher DA and PA and more related unique content on topic. Somehow they are even appearing with double listings in this search. Why is this? Am I missing something? Any ideas or suggestions appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | emerald0 -
Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?
A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site. The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to. Does this hurt SEO? I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed? Thanks mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100 -
Is my competitor up to no good? Strange site-explorer results.
I'm researching a competitor using site explorer and the seomoz toolbar and getting some strange results. When you search by the domain name in site explorer you get no results, but the toolbar shows 170K incoming links. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com I noticed the top referring page was a strange internal url so I ran that through site explorer and discovered 19 links.. When you put the strange link in a browser, it redirects to the home url;.. At this url the toolbar shows 220 links and semoz shows 19 http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/?xid_78e7f=0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com%2F%3Fxid_78e7f%3D0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c What is up with that url? What are they doing? This is a site ranking #1 for my local search term even though he has about 50 pages of almost duplicate content. See link below. I'm really scratching my head here. http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/home.php?all=categories
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dwallner0 -
Thinking of redirecting *all* mobile traffic to another site (via an advertiser) - safe to do?
Hi, I am thinking of redirecting all mobile (iphone, cell phone, etc) to an advertiser (so completely different content than my site). Is there any risk of getting banned from google (etc) for doing this? (this is for an adult site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dmn020 -
Do backlinks with good anchor text from bad sites help?
Hi, In the Netherlands, the SEO competition for terms like loans is very competitive. I see a website in this industry that seems to be doing very well based on links with good anchor text from sites that seem quite worthless to me, such as: http://www.online-colleges-helper.com/ and http://www.alohapath.com/ My question is: is it worth pursuing this type of links? I assume these must be paid links, or am I wrong? I'd really rather not go down this route but I don't want to be outranked by someone who is using these types of links... Many thanks in advance for any type of insight! Annemieke
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnnemiekevH0