Penalized by Penguin 1.1 Release
-
I just realized that my blog, (www.onbetterterms.com) just recently got blacklisted. That blog actually redirects to www.springcoin.com/blog
On May 25th, Google released the Penguin 1.1 update. After looking at my rankings, I found out that all my keywords positions were dropped.
I have no idea why, and don't know how to fix this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
There is no signal of this website's (www.onbetterterms.com) getting penalized. But still this URL has been redirected to a different one. My advice, concentrate on your onpage optimization techniques, instead of running after and checking for page penalty. Stick to the natural ways of seo and promote your website through quality contents, maintain a keyword density of maximum 1%, things must be fine in the next two catches by Google Bot.
Don't mind but I feel that you have mentioned the URL ie. www.onbetterterms.com here, only to get some traffic to your website, which you have actually got. Nice trick..., but not good for the community.
-
Yes, those links were on the first page of OSE.
In order to properly diagnose your issue, a trained SEO would need to evaluate your website along with your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools account.
For the purposes of this Q&A, I will accept your diagnosis of a Penguin "penalty". The purpose of the Penguin algorithm update was to stop sites from manipulating their ranking based upon unnatural links. Taking a quick look at the links to your site, there seems to be at least some valid reasons for Google to believe your site engaged in manipulative linking.
Did anyone else own the domain before you? Are there others who helped you with the site? An SEO, developer or employee who may have built these links?
Either way, the links need to be cleaned up.
-
Hi Ryan,
First of all, I appreciate all your effort and input. Can't thank this community enough!
I have no idea on how those links were created. All our links were from personal finance blogs or mainstream media sites. I never bought links or hired anyone to do link building for us.
If you don't mind me asking, how were you able to find these links? Are you using open site explorer?
-
Kevin,
It seems your www.onbetterterms.com site has been redirected to another site. If you have a penalized site and redirect it to another site, you run the risk of penalizing the other site.
Regarding the onbetterterms.com site, do you have any idea how the following example links were created?
There are other links which appear manipulative like the ones above.
-
I never really went too deep into building links to the new SEO articles I wrote...I did a few internal links within my blog, but NEVER went crazy.. maybe just 1-2 at the most...
I never in my life bought any links
-
OK so you built links specifically to the landing page of your new content? Or to your home page?
Where did you get these links from? Did you buy them or build them?
-
Thanks Ryan, the reason i suggest Google Webmaster tool for extracting the link profile is because its a good point to start! then yes one can go deep in to links using other software...
-
About 3-4 Months ago, I focused heavily on doing a lot of keyword research analysis, and cherry picking keywords I could rank for using SEOmoz's tool.
I would say that I was moderately successful, but the funny thing is that literally almost EVERY SINGLE keyword that was ranked just fell off the earth. I always wrote unique content.
But some articles that weren't specifically targeted for SEO purposes maintained their rank (for the most part)
-
Thanks for your help. When I went here: http://onlinealley.com/seotools/googlebannedchecker/ I entered www.onbetterterms.com and it says it's been blacklisted. Is there another more legit website that you check?
So would you say the solution is to try and hunt down the domains with the anchor text of "debt eye" and kindly ask to remove it?
-
Thumbs up...
However, Im not sure the self-diagnosis is correct as the sites still rank for their domain name etc... I would like to see more information on the search terms which have dropped rankings.
-
I'm still trying to figure out why I exactly got penalized. It's a mystery that I don't seem to understand.
This article answers that question: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
At some point in time either you or someone working on your behalf built some bad links to your site. An example is: http://christianprotocol.com/bbs/view.php?id=cpiboard01&page=14&page_num=20&select_arrange=hit&desc=&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&keyword=&no=630&category=
The above link is one of many links you have from asian websites which are pages full of links related to viagra and other spam. Web pages like this one are not helpful to users. They have little reason to exist other then to manipulate search engine rankings. In short, placing links to your website on such pages violates Google's Guidelines. The Penguin update is designed to penalize websites which practice in such behaviors.
How to fix the issue? At a high level, it is a three step process:
1. Compile a complete list of all URLs linking to your website. Do not simply use the list from Google Webmaster Tools as that list generally only captures about half the links to your site.
2. Every site needs to be visited. A determination needs to be made if the link is "organic" (meaning it complies with Google's Guidelines) or "inorganic" which means it is a manipulative link.
3. The webmasters of each inorganic link need to be contacted with a request to remove the link.
The above solution assumes your self-diagnosis is correct.
-
Please can you clarify the situation?
Neither onbetterterms.com nor springcoin.com have been de-indexed or blacklisted.
Did you get a message in your webmasters account?
Looking at the anchor text backlink profile of onbetterterms.com specifically I can see why it looks very un-natural! You have 136 links coming from only 16 domains all with the same anchor text. This anchor text appears to have nothing to do with your domain name. See attached.
For some reason it uploaded the image three times but they are all the same image so ignore two of them... EDIT You also still rank number 1 in the UK for debt eye so I'm unsure where you have been penalized. Please can you clarify the situation so we can assist.
-
Kevin this could be the quality of links pointing to your website... if the quality of links is bad then it will eventually hurt your website as well... (happened with one of the client i have)
-
Kavin not to panic and planning a solid strategy is the real key to success…
If you are sure its Penguin… then get in to your link profile (best is to extract the link profile from Google Webmaster tool). Now when you have your link profile (may be in a csv) get in to it and figure out how many links are coming from your own network or network of websites… even more how many link pointing to your website that are already hit by penguin…
Clean your link profile and submit the reconsideration request to Google.
IT is good to build some good high authority links from different resources while removing links.
Removing links from 3<sup>rd</sup> party website is sometime difficult so in order to be successful one have to use every possible way to request the website to remove a link i.e phone, email and others.
-
HI David,
Thanks for the resources. I had a chance to look through the articles, but I'm still trying to figure out why I exactly got penalized. It's a mystery that I don't seem to understand.
In one of the articles, it mentioned that there could be "over-optimization" with anchor texts. I looked at some of my articles and I don't have many in-bound links with similar anchor texts.
I did, however, submit a request to Google to review it, but I'm not expecting anything out of it.
-
There are a number of helpful guides on this, instead of summarizing I'll point you int he right direction.
See:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/7-achievable-steps-for-great-seo-after-the-penguin-update
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
-
Move from 4 Domains to 1
Hey Moz Community We are running 4 domains at the moment. www.rapturecamps.com www.surfcamp.travel www.surfcampbali.com www.surfcampinportugal.com We started of our business with 1. after a view years in business we got the option to buy the other 3 domains which have ranked quite well with certain keywords. As its quite allot of work maintaining all these websites with two languages, we where thinking of actually moving number 2, 3 ,4 all to number 1. All domains receive still some good rankings as well as daily hits. So we kinda like would like to keep the SEO Juice. Therefore we where researching for some time what would be the best practice todo so. For us there are two possible options We go trough all posts/pages on the domain 2,3,4 and copy the content over to domain 1. After thats done we create 301 redirects on the domains 2,3,4 linking them back to domain 1 posts/pages. We do do so by manually adding the 301's into the htaccess file, so we are able to delete the Wordpress installations. Our we just copy the Pages/Posts from the domains 2,3,4 to the domain 1 and then kill the 2,3,4 domains afterwords, and let google index these Pages/Posts on the new domain. This way we think we would loose the whole SEO Juice from the old domains. The reason we are asking this one here, we have been reading that this method could lead to red flags at google if we redirect to much Pages/Post back to Domain 1. Hopefully someone here can help us answer that question.
Technical SEO | | 5Gates0 -
All rankings lost from page 1 to 5+
Hello, all my keywords are dropped on Google from 1. st page to page 5+. Is these Penguin 3.0 problem? What to do now? Register new domain and move website? I loose 1 year:( Details: PA: 53 DA:46 (backlinks from 110 domains), domain old: 3 years I didnt recived any message in Google webmaster. Sorry for my english. Please help me! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | cerar0 -
2 sites using 1 CMS... issues?
Hi, We are working with a client that has 2 sites in the same sector. They are currently on separate servers, with separate blogs, images galleries etc. Both sites rank combined for over 200 terms. IF we were to "combine" the sites on one CMS, with one IP, two separate front ends, one blog stream, one image gallery what do you think the SEO impact would be from this? We had an issue with another client whose sites were too close and we had to separate in order to get them both to rank. Further to this we want both sites to now have their own https certificate however this wouldn't be possible if combined. Interested to hear thoughts on this. Thanks
Technical SEO | | lauratagdigital0 -
Can Silos and Exact Anchor Text In Links Hurt a Site Post Penguin?
Just got a client whose site dropped from a PR of 3 to zero. This happened shortly after the Penguin release, June, 2012. Examining the site, I couldn't find any significant duplicate content, and where I did find duplicate content (9%), a closer look revealed that the duplication was totally coincidental (common expressions). Looking deeper, I found no sign of purchased links or linking patterns that would hint at link schemes, no changes to site structure, no change of hosting environment or IP address. I also looked at other factors, too many to mention here, and found no evidence of black hat tactics or techniques. The site is structured in silos, "services", "about" and "blog". All page titles that fall under services are categorized (silo) under "services", all blog entries are categorized under "blogs", and all pages with company related information are categorized under "about". When exploring the site's links in Site Explorer (SE), I noticed that SE is identifying the "silo" section of links (i.e. services, about, blog, etc.) and labeling it as an anchor text. For example, domain.com/(services)/page-title, where the page title prefix (silo), "/services/", is labeled as an anchor text. The same is true for "blog" and "about". BTW, each silo has its own navigational menu appearing specifically for the content type it represents. Overall, though there's plenty of room for improvement, the site is structured logically. My question is, if Site Explorer is picking up the silo (services) and identifying it as an anchor text, is Google doing the same? That would mean that out of the 15 types of service offerings, all 15 links would show as having the same exact anchor text (services). Can this type of site structure (silo) hurt a website post Penguin?
Technical SEO | | UplinkSpyder0 -
Items 1 to 9 of 22484 total in our Meta Description
Our homepage on our ecommerce site has a category as part of the front page. Unfortunately the top of the category says: Items 1 to 9 of 22484 total Is there a way through GWMT or any other method of stopping Google from adding this on to the front of our Meta Description? Or is the only solution to remove it from the page all together?
Technical SEO | | Benj250 -
Hit by the penguin update
Hi, My site @ www.mortgageadvicecenter.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update. I cannot be found at all in google for certain keywords such as mortgage advice where we ranked page 2. We still rank for certain keywords. I really don't know why we have been penalised and what to do. I have plenty of brand links and nothing out of the ordinary link distribution. This obviously affects our bottem line so do you have any idea's or time scales? Any help would be appreciated, Thanks Ryan
Technical SEO | | pensionadvice0 -
Google Plus 1
How google plus 1 votes can affect your position in google search engine? On my website i have a google plus button, i have just 3 votes, if i buy lets say 100 votes, but slowly, in a month, will this affect my ranking positively?
Technical SEO | | prunarevic0 -
Google +1 not recognizing rel-canonical
So I have a few pages with the same content just with a different URL. http://nadelectronics.com/products/made-for-ipod/VISO-1-iPod-Music-System http://nadelectronics.com/products/speakers/VISO-1-iPod-Music-System http://nadelectronics.com/products/digital-music/VISO-1-iPod-Music-System All pages rel-canonical to:
Technical SEO | | kevin4803
http://nadelectronics.com/products/made-for-ipod/VISO-1-iPod-Music-System My question is... why can't google + (or facebook and twitter for that matter) consolidate all these pages +1. So if the first two had 5 +1 and the rel-canonical page had 5 +1's. It would be nice for all pages to display 15 +1's not 5 on each. It's my understanding that Google +1 will gives the juice to the correct page. So why not display all the +1's at the same time. Hope that makes sense.0