Please help on this penalized site!
-
OK, this is slowly frying my brain and would like some clarification from someone in the know, we have posted multiple reconsideration requests the regular "site violates googles quality guidelines" .."look for unnatural links etc" email back in March 2012,
I came aboard the business in August 2012 to overcome bad SEO companies work. So far i have filled several disavow requests by domain and cleared over 90% of our backlink profile which where all directory, multiple forum spam links etc from WMT, OSE and Ahrefs and compiled this to the disavow tool, as well as sending a google docs shared file in our reconsideration request of all the links we have been able to remove and the disavow tool, since most where built in 2009/2010 a lot where impossible to remove.
We managed to shift about 12 - 15% of our backlink profile by working very very hard too remove them. The only links that where left where quality links and forum posts created by genuine users and relevant non spam links As well as this we now have a high quality link profile which has also counteracted a lot of the bad "seo" work done by these previous companies, i have explained this fully in our reconsideration request as well as a massive apology on behalf of the work those companies did, and we are STILL getting generic "site violates" messages, so far we have spent in excess of 150 hours to get this penalty removed and so far Google hasn't even batted an eyelid.
We have worked SO hard to combat this issue it almost feels almost very personal, if Google read the reconsideration request they would see how much work we have done too remove this issue. If anyone can give any updates or help on anything we have missed i would appreciate it, i feel like we have covered every base!!
Chris
-
Ha, okay, got it!
Go after some long tail content and start adding some value to the site and you should have a broader scope and some pages that will rank on their own merit. Gives you something constructive to do and some possible link targets!
-
Absolutely, our rankings have been static since i started so i hope we will see some results soonish will keep you posted.
Chris
Ps - Peter owns the business and set our Moz account up! i do the work! hah
-
Hey Chris (peter? sorry)
Yeah, will be interesting, every case is unique I figure but certainly, if you get rid of the problems you can at least concentrate on moving forwards.
Keep me posted.
-
thanks Marcus, we have whilst trying to remove the bad replace with good and get white hat all the way, so my biggest worry now is too see how much recovery actually happens, the general consensus seems to be anywhere between 10 - 90 days!
Chris
-
Hey Peter, that's great news, keep us posted on how that works out from a traffic perspective and would love a poke around in your analytics once the dust has settled.
Cheers,
Marcus
-
Just an update Marcus - this morning we got our "manual spam penalty revoked" notice so lets see if rankings return.
-
so far copyscape/plagspotter has shown nothing, website has been changed since the warning came in and a lot of content was changed. i feel that one issue might be down to the enjin.com list of forums that run one forum but span hundreds of websites with different layouts (horrid spam that wasnt actually created by bad seo's!) ive been asking for ages to get this removed and its all been filed into our disavow. Like i said i think 90%+ of our backlinks across WMT/ahrefs/OSE have been requested to disavow.
None of our blog content has been duplicated but this is new and didnt exist when the unnatural warning was issued, its just so frustrating how i feel we have covered every angle and you find most of your working life becoming a minion to the google algorithmn!
-
Hi Brian, will definately look at this thanks, i know that our duplicate issues across the site are slim and other onpage things - massive increase in site loading times etc etc are going well, thanks
-
Hi Marcus, i agree, sure, in detail:
-
built high quality natural link profile with varied anchor text since Aug
-
provided a text document of removed links (about 12 - 15% of WMT/OSE/Ahrefs link profile) in recon request
-
provided a list of every directory and bad looking forum links, irrelevant websites in disavow tool by domain:
-
made a simple text copy on google docs of disavow in recon request.
-
apologised on behalf of work done by previous companies
-
promised all future work will be compliant to webmaster standards.
I have ran several audits since working with Palicomp, everything from canonicalisation to crawl errors to dupe content and ive found a small amount of source code duplicates (down to cubecarts awful cms) but not much else
-
-
Hey Chris
Often, it would seem they want to see a continued effort on your part to clean up and the link profile still looks pretty stinky in OSE. That said, I appreciate, it's almost impossible to get many links removed so you can only do so much.
It may be that you just have to keep trying, keep cleaning up, keep emailing, send letters, make phonecalls etc and just show even more willing before they will let you out of penalty jail.
Have you had a professional audit done with regards to the problems on the site? Have you looked at duplication etc?
Can you detail what you have done in your reconsideration requests?
Marcus
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
-
Site architecture, inner link strategy and duplicate or thin content HELP :)
Ok, can I just say I love that Moz exists! I am still very new to this whole website stuff. I've had a site for about 2 years that I have re-designed several times. It has been published this entire time as I made changes but I am now ready to create amazing content for my niche. Trouble is my target audience is in a very focused niche and my site is really only about 1 topic - life insurance for military families. I'm a military spouse who happens to be an experience life insurance agent offering plans to active duty service members, their spouses as well as veterans and retirees. So really I have 3 niches within a niche. I'm REALLY struggling on how to set up my site architecture. My site is basically fresh so it's a good time to get it hammered down as best as possible with my limited knowledge. Might I also add this is a very competitive space. My competitors are big, established brands who offer life insurance along with unaffiliated, informational sites like military.com or the va benefits site. The people in my niche rarely actually search for life insurance because they think they are all set by the military. When they do search it's very short which is common as this niche lives in a world of acronyms. I'm going to have to get real creative to see if there are any long tail keywords I can use as supporting posts but I think my best route is to attempt to rank for the short one to three keyword phrases this niche looks for while searching. Given my expertise on the subject I am able to write long 1000-5000 content on the matter that will also point out some considerations my competitors dont really cover. My challenge is I cant see how this can be broken into sub topics without having thin supporting content. It's my understanding that I should create these in order to inner link and have a shot at ranking. In thinking about my topic I feel like the supporting posts can only be so long. Furthermore, my three niches within my small overall niche search for short but different keywords. Seems I am struggling to put it all into words. Let me stop here with a question - is it bad to have one category in a website? If not I feel like this would solve my dilemma in making a good site map and content plan. it is possible to split my main topic into 3 categories. I heard somewhere you shouldn't inner link posts from different categories. Problem is if I dont it's not ideal for the user experience as the topics really arent that different. Example a military member might be researching his/her own life insurance and be curious about his spouses coverage. In order to satisfy this user's experience and increase the time on my site I should link to where they can find more dept on their spouses coverage which would be in a different category. Is this still acceptable since it's really not a different subject?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | insuretheheroes.com0 -
Competition site with Duplicate Name
I have a client who is in real estate and one of his competition used the same Name and Domain and added the word Toronto in front. The competition is putting similar content on the website. The competition also hijacked the Google listing since they both work in the same building. Is this going to affect the ranking our website? What negative effect will it put on our website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX0 -
Why isnt this site ranking?
I just took over for a site and noticed they have no presence for any keywords...not even low ranks. Their backlink profile is not the best, but webmaster tools says they have no manual actions. vonderhaar.com Thoughts on the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Why is my site not getting crawled by google?
Hi Moz Community, I have an escort directory website that is built out of ajax. We basically followed all the recommendations like implementing the escaped fragment code so Google would be able to see the content. Problem is whenever I submit my sitemap on Google webmastertool it always 700 had been submitted and only 12 static pages had been indexed. I did the site query and only a number of pages where indexed. Does it have anything to do with my site being on HTTPS and not on HTTP? My site is under HTTPS and all my content is ajax based. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | en-gageinc0 -
Why are these sites outranking me?
I am trying to rank for the phrase "a link between worlds walkthrough" I am on page 1 but there are several results that just outranks me and I cannot see any reason that they would be doing so. My site is hiddentriforce.com/a-link-between-worlds/walkthrough/ For that page I have 5 linking domains, varied anchor text that spans from things like "here" to a variety of related phrases. All of the links come from really good sites My page has 1400 likes, 90 shares, and about 20 each in tweets and +'s DA of 44 PA of 37 The 4 and 5 ranked sites both have WAY less social interactions, lower PA and DA, less links, etc Yet they outrank me why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Is my landing page "over-optimized"? Please help
Hello out there My website www.painterdublin.com and www.tilers-dublin.com were heavily hit by google panda update on 27.9.2012 and EMD update few days after. I lost about 70% of the traffic mainly from combination of the keywords from my domain name (painter dublin and tilers dublin) and never managed to recover from it. I am wondering if I should also concentrate on rewriting the content of both home landing pages in the terms of "KEYWORD DENSITY". Do you think my content is "OVER OPTIMIZED" for my main keywords? (painter dublin, tilers-dublin). What is the correct use? Is there any tool to guide me? I am aware I am using those terms quite often. I don't want to start deleting those terms before I know the right way to do it. Is there anybody willing to have a look at my sites and give me advice please? kind regards Jaro
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarik0 -
Changing Site URLs
I am working on a new client that hasn't implemented any SEO previously. The site has terrible url nomenclature and I am wondering if it is worth it to try and change it. Will I lose rankings? What is the best url naming structure? Here's the website http://www.formica.com/en/home/TradeLanding.aspx. (I am only working on the North America site.) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Site: on Google
Hello, people. I have a quick question regarding search in Google. I use search operator [site:url] to see indexing stauts of my site. Today, I was checking indexing status and I found that Google shows different numbers of indexed pages depends on search setting. 1. At default setting (set as 10 search result shows) > I get about 150 pages indexed by Google. 2. I set 100 results shows per page and tried again. > I get about 52 pages indexed by Google. Of course I used same page URL. I really want to know which data is accurate. Please help people!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Artience0