Recent Penguin Update
-
Hi SEOMoz,
Today www.carrentalbuddy.com.au was hit pretty big by the Penguin 2.0 update (I believe).
We had some pretty strong rankings for multiple search terms and we believe we have done everything by the book for Google.
We can't seem to figure out why our rankings have dropped so dramatically recently and was hoping that some SEOMoz's could take a quick look to help us fix this problem.
Kindest Regards,
Chris
-
I have seen any changes in rankings related with penguin 2.0
-
I don't know if you've done everything "by the book" like you say but you have tons of exact match anchors.
-
Check this out:
http://searchengineland.com/penguin-4-with-penguin-2-0-generation-spam-fighting-is-now-live-160544
It is official. I suspect this may be your issue. Since you have done everything "by the book", your site might not have done anything wrong per say. Instead, the other sites may have been deemed bigger "authorities."
-
Any notices or warnings in GWMT?
edit: nevermind, I've been under a rock for a few hours.
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
-
Content update on 24hr schedule
Hello! I have a website with over 1300 landings pages for specific products. These individual pages update on a 24hr cycle through out API. Our API pulls reviews/ratings from other sources and then writes/updates that content onto the page. Is that 'bad"? Can that be viewed as spammy or dangerous in the eyes of google? (My first thought is no, its fine) Is there such a thing as "too much content". For example if we are adding roughly 20 articles to our site a week, is that ok? (I know news websites add much more than that on a daily basis but I just figured I would ask) On that note, would it be better to stagger our posting? For example 20 articles each week for a total of 80 articles, or 80 articles once a month? (I feel like trickle posting is probably preferable but I figured I would ask.) Is there any negatives to the process of an API writing/updating content? Should we have 800+ words of static content on each page? Thank you all mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
New Google Update on 21st April
Hi We all know that the mobile update is coming on the 21st April and if your site isnt mobile friendly in Googles eye you will be removed from the mobile index. Will this affect tablets. Most of our pages are mobile friendly but there are a few which arent. However these are tablet friendly. I havent heard Google mention about tablet rankings. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Proper naming convention when updating sitemaps
I have a semi-big site (500K pages) with lots of new pages being created. I also have a process that updates my sitemap with all of these pages automatically. I have 11 sitemap files and a sitemap index file. When I update my sitemaps and submit them to Google, should I keep the same names?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Is that Penguin 2.0 or just temporary situation?
Hey, i changed my hosting provider because better server hardware on 22 May. And many results dropped on google! My website opened only just 17 Jan 2013. Maybe you want to look my anchors. you can find attachment image. Total backlinks: 4,9K Is that temporary situation coz changing ip address (hosting provider) or penguin 2.0? nw68v.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | umutege0 -
My New(ish) Site Isn't Ranking Well And Recently Fell
I launched my site (jesfamilylaw.com) at the beginning of January. Since then, I've been trying to build high quality back links. I have a few back links with keyword targeted anchor text from some guest posts I've published (maybe 3 or so) and I have otherwise signed up for business directories and industry-specific directories. I have a few social media profiles and some likes on Facebook, both for the company page and some posts. Despite this, I've had a lot of trouble cracking Google's top ten for any term, long or tall tail. I was starting to climb for Evanston Family Law, which is the key term I believe I am best optimized for, but took a dive yesterday. I fell from maybe the 14th result to somewhere on the 4th page. For all my other target terms, I don't know if I've gotten into the 20s yet. To further complicate matters, my Google Places listing isn't showing and is on the second page of results for Places searches, after businesses that aren't located in the same city. The night before I fell, I resubmitted my site to Google because Webmaster tools was showing duplicate title tags when I had none. I had also made a couple changes to some internal links and title tags, but only for a small fraction of the site. Long story short, I don't know what's going on. I don't know why I fell in the rankings and why my site isn't competitive for some of my target key phrases. I've read so many horror stories about Penguin that I fear my onsite optimization may be hurting my rankings or my back links are insufficient. I've done plenty of competitor research and the sites that are beating me have very aggressive onsite optimization and few back links. In short, I am very confused. Any help would be immensely appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JESFamilyLaw0 -
Can Linking Between Your Own Sites Excessively Be a Penguin No-No?
I have a bunch of travel-related sites that for a long time dominated google.com.au without any intensive SEO whatsoever. Aside from solid on-page content and meta tag, I did no link building. However, all of my sites are heavily interlinked, and I think they are linked with do follow links and lots of anchor texts. Here are a few of them: www.beautifulpacific.com www.beautifulfiji.com www.beautifulcooklands.com My idea in inter-linking them was to create a kind of branded "Beautiful" nexus of sites. However, when Penguin hit -- which I believe was on April 27th -- search traffic crashed, and has crashed over and over again. I've read that Penguin penalized over-optimization vis a vis anchor text links. I don't have a lot of inbound links like these, but they are everywhere among my sites. Is it possible that all of my text links have hurt me with Penguin? Thanks to everyone in advance for your time and attention. I really appreciate it. -Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RCNOnlineMarketing0 -
New server update + wrong robots.txt = lost SERP rankings
Over the weekend, we updated our store to a new server. Before the switch, we had a robots.txt file on the new server that disallowed its contents from being indexed (we didn't want duplicate pages from both old and new servers). When we finally made the switch, we somehow forgot to remove that robots.txt file, so the new pages weren't indexed. We quickly put our good robots.txt in place, and we submitted a request for a re-crawl of the site. The problem is that many of our search rankings have changed. We were ranking #2 for some keywords, and now we're not showing up at all. Is there anything we can do? Google Webmaster Tools says that the next crawl could take up to weeks! Any suggestions will be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9Studios0 -
Our URLs have changed. Do we request our external links be updated as well?
Hello Forum, We've re-launched our website with a new, SEO-friendly URL structure. We have also set up 301 redirects from our old URLs to the new ones. Now, is there any benefit to asking those external websites that link to us to update their links with our new URLs? What is the SEO best practice? Thanks for your insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0