Penguin 2.1: How to recover?
-
I know Penguin focuses on links but do you need to personally reach out and try to manually remove the links, or can you simply place the bad links in the disavow tool.
I know for manual penalties you must manually reach out and try to remove and use disavow as an absolute last resort.
Does the same go for algorithm penalties?
Any insight would be helpful.
-
Yeah, technically, you're supposed to make a good faith effort to remove the links, but Google isn't clear on how many, how much effort, etc. This seems to hold true for Penguin in addition to manual penalties. Most of the Penguin recovery stories I've head have involved pretty deep cuts, to be brutally honest.
-
102drive
I think Richard gives some reasonable direction here. So, if you know absolutely you have a problem, you need to take action. If you are seeing some movement in a site(s), don't be too quick to pull the trigger. If the links are from many different domains you have a different problem than if the links are a lot from one or two domains. With a lot of links from a single domain, IMO, you reach out, and see if you can get headway with the owner. Then you use the disavow tool.
When we see outside domains linking to a site, we usually do not get too uptight unless it is one that is going nuts. An example is that we had a directory called pinhub with over 5K links all of a sudden to a single site. We did not in any way engage them nor did the client. For something like that, we immediately use the disavow tool as we know, based on experience, they will not do anything to stop their behavior. Might as well shutdown any negative effect. Note: the links are still going to show, but you are telling Google, you are disavowing the links. We still send the email for our own backup, but we expect nothing from the perpetrators.
Hope that helps,
Robert
-
You are suppose to reach out and have the links removed as disavow is suppose to be used as a last resort tool.
Penguin 2.1 is pretty strange, some of my clients sites got hit, others saw a rise. Whats weirder is that the larger companies (amazon, yelp, yellowpages etc) are dominating the first page. Theres a few local keywords where 8 out of the 10 rankings is yelp!
Anyhow, I think you should let the website sit a week or so and let the dust settle before resorting to disavow. I think Google is just shuffling.
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
-
Link profile heavy with press release syndication links caused drop at Penguin 2.0
I'm wrestling with something that I'm hoping members of the community can provide input on.... I've working with an enterprise level client that is in the business of data capture and distribution. I've diagnosed a clear drop of traffic on May 22nd, i.e a loss of search visibility post Penguin 2.0. Their link profile is big! Discussions with internal stakeholders who have been with the company 10's of years confirm that no "link building" service providers have ever been hired and no over-zealous employee is ever likely to have tried to "do" link building internally. They are just one of those lucky companies that by their nature publish information that people want to link to and share. As a first port of call I've grouped links by anchor text and can see groups of hundreds of matching anchors based on their brand URL and specific page titles. The matching anchors have resulted from big take up of interesting data that they have marketed via press releases. NOT for link purposes. My question is this.... Does the community think or have evidence (or can point me toward any case studies) that show that Press release syndication alone could result in: a) a penguin penalty or...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | QubaSEO
b) a devaluing of press release type links during Penguin 2.0 that could have resulted in a loss of search visibility and give the impression of a penalty Your thoughts are much appreciated!0 -
My Penguin Recovery Attempt
So I have decided today to attempt to beat the odds and try and do a full recovery from the Penguin Update. I am going to create a Google Doc in which I will make public and link at the end of this post for all of you to see. I am going to meticulously go through a massive back link audit of my site and try to see if I can recover from my loss of some of my main keywords back from April 24th. I want to clarify that I DID NOT get effected from Penguin 2.0, but I did from 1.0 and have not recovered since. I have to be honest I feel like I have done everything up to now, but I realized I needed to make this a very long journey into a massive audit into my back link profile which contains thousands of back links which I have been honestly avoiding. I just want to see if I put the work, I will see the results and maybe it can help others I will document everything I do in detail as well as dates when I do them. I'm sure there will be plenty of coffee fueled nights of Jibber-Jabber...and I apologize for that ahead of time. I hope at the end there is light and can shed some on others. I am starting with a blank canvas, so keep checking back on my progress. I generally work at night so you will see most changes in the morning. Here is the link to my Doc - http://bit.ly/11dUkzc Wish Me Luck
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cbielich1 -
In (or In-between) 2 cities - and mentioning both cities in title tags
Hi, just wondering what your thoughts are on this one - several businesses I work for are located in in-between places. For example, one is in one city for its address, but in another city's council (/state) area. Another is in a rural area, almost exactly the same distance between 2 cities (about 10 miles either way). Both businesses mention both cities on several pages of their websites, including in title tags (including homepage title tags), and it seems to be working OK in terms of rankings (ie they're ranking well for keyphrases for both cities). Is it acceptable practice to mention both cities in a single title tag though? That's my question. (some of this confusion dates back to UK local authority boundary/name changes, in 2009)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Not Sure Exactly How Penguin is Effecting My Site (looking for tuff love)
Hello Everyone, I own a small web design firm website. My site was for sure hit by Penguin, but not sure why they devalued my pages. I dont really do SEO or link building except for my own site. I normally turn clients down when they want SEO services. Mainly because we do web design really well, so I've chosen to invest my time doing that versus doing both. For most of my keywords I took a 5-10 spot drop. Nothing super major, but enough that its tanking my business. I've survived all of the panda stuff, so I assumed my content writing, and link building tactics were good, but I'm wrong. Here is my website: http://www.clikzy.com/ I will explain what I have been doing below, and I am looking for a little help/direction. I don't mind if you look at my site, links, and are brutally honest. I do have original content ( I just ran everything through copyscape a month prior), and I occasionally get duplicate pages as my CMS tends to create them automatically, but we do a fairly good job of redirecting those pages when they occur. My link building tactics have been a mixture of the following. I have used anchor text alot which could be my demise. Forum postings
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Juratovic
Blog Comments
Website Footers (roughly 20 over the course of a year)
Web Design Directories (explain below) I did start using directories in January. I would use OpenSite Explorer, and review some of my bigger competitors, and would occasionally get listed on a web design directory they were on. I think total I probably purchase 8-10 since Jan including botw, business.com, etc. I have some local pages which I create case studies for which ranked fairly well. For instance for the term Baltimore Web Design I used to rank #1, but not I'm 5-6. Here's the keyword: http://www.clikzy.com/reston-web-design.html One more note: I did redirect an older website I have (12 years) to my current site (3 years) in Jan. Mainly because it ranked well for terms in NYC. I've dropped for those terms around 5 spots. I have a few questions: 1. What would you suggest to fix something like this? Power Content? Better Links? (of course, we all want better links) 2. Remove links? I am not sure which ones are bad. One thought was to just kill my local pages (roughly 15 pages) which would also kill any bad links I may have point to them. 3. If I have a bad link pointing to a internal page, could that bring down my home page rankings? Any help would be appreciated. I am in the process of interviewing for a full time PR person to come on staff to help us with our content, and PR. I knew I should have invested in this person a year ago! ha! Thank you! Pete0 -
Penguin Update Seems To Benefit Wikipedia Etc
I was updating product info on my site which was apparently hammered by Penguin. As I was updating I was "Googling" the products. I noticed that every single product I carry, Wikipedia held the #1 position in search results. Anyone else noticing this? I previously held the number 1 position on 2 of my products but I was knocked down to 60+...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0 -
Beaten in SERP's by a site going 'all in' on 2 keywords in their anchor text profile.
I would like to get peoples thoughts on putting 80% of your anchor text links in just 2 keywords vs a nice spread of branded and longtail keywords.. like I am. recently fell off the first page for a key SERP.. and the site in P10 has gone nuts on just that two keyword's.. I know we have a good site onpage/ conversion / low bounce rate page views etc.. Pretty sure we get more traffic than them. Seems that this obvious bloated anchor text profiling has worked for them though.. What do you guys think/know?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | robertrRSwalters0 -
A domain is ranking for a plural key word in SERPs on page 1 but for the singular not at all?
What could the reasons that a domain is ranking for the plural version of a key word on SERPs page 1 and for the singular version not at all? Google knows that both key words belong together, as in the SERPs for one version also the other version of the key word is being highlighted. If I search for the domain with the plural keyword it shows up on the first page in SERPs, but If I search for the same keyword as singular (in German it is just removing an “s”) I see the plural version highlighted many times but I cannot find my domain. What could be the reason for this behavior? penalties?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SimCaffe0