Penguin 2.0 update, ranking dropped. Advice needed!
-
Hello
After another penguin 2.0 update the website i've been working on dropped in rankings,some of keywords that i ranked in #1 are now on second and third page, you can see this screenshot here http://screencast.com/t/MramoXgTr
95% of my competitors were not even effected with this update at all, most of them don't even optimize their website for SEO, rather they use paid directories.
First thing i did is analyzed my backing profile using OSE, to my surprise i found a lot of low quality domains pointing to my pages with a keyword in anchor text. A lot of them blog commenting and low quality article directories. Since i don't have control over these links and i cant remove them i used Disavow tool to do the job.
For the past 3 months, i've been doing a lot of hight quality link building; such as
press releases once in 2 months, squidoo lens and hubpages 3 posts a week for each keyword, youtube video, in fact my youtube video still ranks in #3 for high competitive search, i was involved in social media, posting tweets every week and Facebook posts.I really hope that someone can help me here with a good advice on getting my rankings back here's my website, let me know what do you think about it.
Thank You
-
Yeah, that's certainly painting the picture that this probably was Penguin and not just a coincidence. Best we know so far (and that's very speculative), Penguin 2.0 didn't introduce much in the way of new ranking factors. That is to say - it's not look at different things, it's just looking deeper in sites and probably being a bit less forgiving. So, the same rules for recovery probably apply to Penguin 2.0 that did to the original Penguin.
Unfortunately, that often means deep cuts to any questionable links and really focusing on quality. If you can't remove the links, that's going to mean disavowing, and even once you've disavowed, you may need to wait for a Penguin data update. Recovery stories have been hard to interpret, even for some very high-end SEOs I know who have been through the process.
The one consistent story we've heard is that, if it is Penguin, you can't just remove a few links disavow, and keep hoping for the best. It may take pretty drastic measures, and you have to weigh those measures against the loss you took. In other words, you have to figure out if the cure is worse than the disease. Sorry to paint a bleak picture, but Penguin is pretty harsh.
-
Dr Pete, based on your questions, it looks like our website has been hit by Penguin 2.0.
"(1) Did the drop happen right on May 22 (Penguin 2.0) or earlier/later? Right on May 22
(2) I see a solid loss in the top 3 - which specific keywords were these, and do they have any commonalities (branded vs. non-brand, for example)? Loss in traffic (40%) exactly after May 22nd and rankings dropped for both branded and non branded keywords anywhere from 1 to 17 positions.
(3) Were these keywords all ranking for the same page? Was it your home-page or a deeper page (it's possible this impacted a specific page or set of pages)? Pretty much, 90% of them were ranking for the Homepage but all the inner pages have been affected.
No manual penalty or warnings in GWT, pages are indexed/cached and loading normal.
-
I think step 1, as hard as it can be, is not to overreact before you have all the facts in. It's been a couple of days now, and the US holiday weekend has passed, so the first thing I'd do is check to see if this drop was temporary.
Next, dig into your analytics, and look for a few things:
(1) Did the drop happen right on May 22 (Penguin 2.0) or earlier/later?
(2) I see a solid loss in the top 3 - which specific keywords were these, and do they have any commonalities (branded vs. non-brand, for example)?
(3) Were these keywords all ranking for the same page? Was it your home-page or a deeper page (it's possible this impacted a specific page or set of pages)?
It looks like Penguin 2.0 is more granular and may target individual pages now, although that's only hearsay at this point. So, you may want to start with bad links to the affected pages. Check Google Webmaster Tools for any manual penalty warnings, and make sure the pages are loading normal, are indexed/cached, etc. You really want to have the situation pinned down before you start disavowing links at large scale.
-
Thanks Cesar for your quick reply, I'm about to disavow those links since i don't have control over them. What do you mean by having 404's on some of the domains?
Thanks for help!
-
Agree with Cesar, your backlinking profile looks a bit suspicious.
Here is a detailed article that still might be applicable to your situation: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience
This article has some great tips that everyone can benefit from in prevention too.
While these aren't likely tied to your ranking drops since Penguin 2.0, here are some things that you should look at improving to help your site too:
- Site design needs to be fixed - content fits screen, but still allows horizontal scrolling
- Not mobile responsive or mobile ready
- Add Google Authorship and Publisher
Hope this helps.
-
Just looking quickly at your back link profile on Open Site Explore and from a outsiders point of view the first thing that stood out to me was all your .edu domains linking to you.
- Most were irrelevant to your business or at least not related (Penguin could have just devalued those links more, than actually penalized you)
- You only have 74 root domains pointing to you, unless you have a list of your competitors its hard to judge.
- Some of the .edu domains are just a bunch of spam comments
- Came up with several 404's on some of the domains so those links are gone
Maybe you just need some more quality back links, its a very tedious process
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
-
Redirect Issue - Drop in ranking after CMS change
Hi Website - https://www.aasprint.com.au/ After we moved the site from wordpress to codeIgniter + angular there has been a huge drop in traffic and ranking. One of the thing we recently realized is the redirection - COULD THAT BE THE ISSUE? On the browser and sitemap the URL doesn't have "/" at the end When checked on redirection tool the URL seems to be redirecting to one with "/" at the end Attached are the screenshots. Also moz bar shows no redirection. However, the issue seems to be flagged by the site audit tool as 301 redirection. Not sure if it's the cause for the drop. What action to take? Any advice would be much appreciated. V7CNtqt j3dJ4TW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bhisshaun0 -
Rankings drop after https migration [Need urgent help]
hey hi guys, i have lost all my organic traffic and in need of urgent help. Plz i need all your SEO expertise. My website is: makemoneyadultcontent.com (before judging me, let me tell you that i have been in adult industry for almost 7 years now and hence this blog was a way to pass my knowledge to everyone who is looking for it) Recently i saw that moving to HTTPS will benefit my site. I did not knew much about technical details of moving to https. My hosting was on siteground, and they have a button which you can press and your website will then be served through https. So i did that. Nothing else was done. this was done on 13th or 14th of june For the next few weeks here is my analytics (image attached) : As you can see the traffic fluctuated and finally i lost everything on 29th june. When i researched more, i found out that you need to follow many steps in order to move to HTTPS. So i followed this guide and completed all the steps: https://www.keycdn.com/blog/http-to-https/ (also checked many other guides and tried to complete all the steps mentioned) Everyone said that the rankings will recover in one week, but now it has been more than 17 days and still the rankings have not improved. My articles are indexed as i can see it using site:makemoneyadultcontent.com but none of them are ranking for the keywords that i was ranking earlier. i have submitted the sitemap in google webmaster and around 166 (out of 218) pages are indexed. Here are few more images to help my case: plz plz help me what i can do to get my website traffic back. i have spent a lot of time and effort in building this site, cant see it die a slow death like this one. 8Wa8c [http ahref](http ahref) D42xw sAd9E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akki910 -
Finding Ranking for search term and increasing ranking
Hi. The company that I'm working with would like to rank highly in google for certain generic search terms (dentist, dentists, etc.). Certain websites the company has used to rank highly in google for generic keywords, but has not for years now since google has revised their algorithm so many times. Moz lists that the company websites are not found in the top 51+ results in google. My first question is: **Is there a way, apart from manually searching the results, to find the ranking position of the website in google? **Ideally, I would like to find a program that will do this. Second, I've been reading a lot of the great articles and comments on Moz, and I've been learning a lot more about SEO. My focus has shifted to spending more attention on User Experience and Social Media instead of placing the exact keywords in the pages / tags of the website. What area(s) should I be focusing on to best increase the ranking of the company website for certain generic terms? Ideally, I'd like to create good quality content, so that users will not instantly click away. I appreciate any thoughts or comments. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | americasmiles0 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
Rankings and keywords
I have a site www.firewall-cs.com that I have been working on for 4 months. The first 2 months the keywords were going up and then...dropped like a rock! We didn't build the website, but it is a Wordpress site so I can make some changes. For the keywords that have "IT" in them, we haven't been able to recover. It's like Google isn't even reading the home page. The home page slider has the H1 in it and has 3. I have told this to the client. Plus there isn't a lot of content on the page. Is the H1 issue enough for the word "IT Support Orlando" to not rank? Any suggestions would help! Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClickIt0 -
Was anyone hit by BOTH the 'Phantom' update as well as Penguin 2.0?
I'm interested to know if Phantom was just a "pre-Penguin" 2.0 or if it was a completely different update. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Blog Not Ranking Well at All in Search Engines, Need Help!
Hi Mozers, Need some help on a CMS I've been working with over the last year. The CMS is built by a team of guys here in Washington State. Basically, I'm having issues with clients content on the blog system not getting ranking correctly at all. Here's a few problems I've noticed: Could you confirm and scale these problems based upon being, "not a problem" "a problem" and "critical must fix" 1. The title tag is pulling from the title of the article which is also automatically generating a URL with underscores instead of dashes. Is having a duplicate URL, Title, and Title tag spammy looking to search engines? Are underscores on long URL's confusing google? Where shorter one's are fine (i.e. domain/i_pad/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keith-Eneix
(i.e.http://www.ductvacnw.com/blog/archives/2013/05/20/5_reasons_to_hire_a_professional_to_clean_your_air_ducts_and_vents), 2. The CMS is resolving all URL's with a canonical instead of a 301 redirect (I've told webmaster tools which preferred url should be indexed). Does using a canonical over a 301 redirect cause any confusion with Google? Is one better practice then the other? 3. The H1 tags on the blog pull from "blog category" instead of the title of the blog post. Is this is a problem? 4. The URl's are quite long with the added "archives/2013/05/20/5". Does this cause problems by pushing the main target keyword further away from the domain name? 5. I'm also noticing the blog post is actually not part of the breadcrumbs where we normally would expect that to populate after the blog category name, Problem? These are some of the things I've noticed and need clarification on. If you see anything else please let me know?0 -
Rankings Nose Diving Help Needed
Hey There SEO Community, I am trying to help these people: http://goo.gl/B1smo They once ranked in the top 10 for "lifewave" and "lifewave patches" but have disappeared. Any idea why and what I can do to help? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | siteoptimized0