Does Google throttle back the search performance of a penalised website/page after the penalty has been removed?
-
Hi Mozzers.
Back in 2013 my website www.octopus-hr.co.uk was hit by a Penguin 2.0 penalty owing to a harmful backlink profile built by a dodgy SEO consultant (now fired). The penalty seemed to apply to the homepage of the site but other pages were unaffected.
We got what links we could removed, disavowed the rest and were informed in September 2013 that the penalty had been removed and our re-inclusion request had been successful. However our website homepage still ranks poorly for the search terms we're targeting in the UK: "HR Software" "HR Systems"
On page factors are in my opinion pretty well optimised for these search terms. In terms of link building post penalty we've focused on high authority and relevant sites. I believe that compared to most of our search competitors the back link profile to our homepage is in pretty good shape, however it still ranks badly.
Has anyone had any experience of a penalty hangover from Google in the past? Are there other things I should consider?
Thanks
David
-
Remember that a lot of links you had are now no longer, removed or disavowed you cant expect to rank the same.
Also how long has it been since you had penalty lifted. It may take a while for all things to equal up again. -
If reconsideration worked and you got a reply from Google, it's likely that you were facing a manual penalty (either instead of or in addition to Penguin). So, it may be that Penguin or some other algorithmic penalty is in play (echoing what Andy said).
Once a penalty expires or is lifted, I'm unaware of any kind of dampening on the site (like, 50% penalty for 3 months and then 25%, etc.). This is much more likely to be a situation where you have multiple layers of problems (some could be technical, etc., and not penalties) and you've removed just the top layer.
-
if you drop me a quick mail over David (address above) I can give you a little more detail. Wouldn't be something I could do here.
-Andy
-
Thanks Andy for your kind offer, if you're happy to have a quick look at our link profile your feedback would be very much appreciated.
-
Hi David,
I can run a quick scan for you and tell you what sort of shape your link profile is in, but what 'could' have happened is that since the penalty, another algorithm has come along and hit you for something else. A little awkward to guess exactly though, but have seen this happen on a number of occasions.
Edit-- OK, your link profile isn't too healthy I'm afraid David. One even listed as Malicious... If you want to drop me a mail over, I will give you a little more info info@inetseo.co.uk
-Andy
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
-
Google search results
I have been doing some searches on google to see where my new site shows up, I started using the search words "graphic design firm st. louis" as a gauge, because my title is St. Louis Missouri Graphic Design Firm. I showed up on about page 5 to start , if I include the word "firm" and a few pages further back if I just search "graphic design st. louis", without the word firm. It seemed i was slowly moving up pages with both searches and then a few days ago I jumped to page 1 for search "graphic design firm st. louis" the thing is it doesnt show up at all now if i search "graphic design st. louis" without the word firm. what would cause the one search to jump so high while the other one dissapeared completely?? and what can i do? my keyword density is same for both , any ideas.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eric69660 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0 -
I have removed over 2000+ pages but Google still says i have 3000+ pages indexed
Good Afternoon, I run a office equipment website called top4office.co.uk. My predecessor decided that he would make an exact copy of the content on our existing site top4office.com and place it on the top4office.co.uk domain which included over 2k of thin pages. Since coming in i have hired a copywriter who has rewritten all the important content and I have removed over 2k pages of thin pages. I have set up 301's and blocked the thin pages using robots.txt and then used Google's removal tool to remove the pages from the index which was successfully done. But, although they were removed and can now longer be found in Google, when i use site:top4office.co.uk i still have over 3k of indexed pages (Originally i had 3700). Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and more importantly how i can fix it? Our ranking on this site is woeful in comparison to what it was in 2011. I have a deadline and was wondering how quickly, in your opinion, do you think all these changes will impact my SERPs rankings? Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
Getting individual website pages to rank for their targeted terms instead of just the home page
Hi Everyone, There is a pattern which I have noticed when trying to get individual pages to rank for the allocated targeted terms when I execute an SEO campaign and would been keen on anyones thoughts on how they have effectively addressed this. Let me try and explain this by going through an example: Let's say I am a business coach and already have a website where it includes several of my different coaching services. Now for this SEO campaign, I'm looking to improve exposure for the clients "business coaching" services. I have a quick look at analytics and rankings and notice that the website already ranks fairly well for that term but from the home page and not the service page. I go through the usual process of optimising the site (on-page - content, meta data, internal linking) as well as a linkbuilding campaign throughout the next couple of month's, however this results in either just the home page improving or the business page does improve, but the homepage's existing ranking has suffered, therefore not benefiting the site overall. My question: If a term already ranks or receives a decent amount of traffic from the home page and not from the page that its supposed to, why do you think its the case and what would you be your approach to try shift the traffic to the individual page, without impacting the site too much?. Note: To add the home page keyword target term would have been updated? Thanks, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
Forced Trailing Slash on PHP Pages In Google!
Hi, have never seen this before so am hoping soemone can shed some light! Google seems to be forcing a trailing slash at the end of our php pages within the search results. For example, Google is indexing http://www.kingstoncabinets.co.uk/heat-convection.php/ (trailing slash) rather than http://www.kingstoncabinets.co.uk/heat-convection.php (without slash). The trailing slash page doesn't display properly and has no page authority. I've ran the site through Screaming Frog and there are no internal links the the trailing slash URL's, nor does there seem to be any external links to these pages. Why is Google forcing the slash? Am confused 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webpresence0 -
Website is not getting indexed in Google! Not sure why?
I just came up with my new blog, its not live yet but the 1<sup>st</sup> landing page is ready, up and running… all is fine but here is the only problem is its not getting indexed in Google and I am not really sure why? .xml sitemap is there Google webmaster and analytics are there Website contain at least that much real social shares that it should get indexed in Google Few Links may be coming from Famous Bloggers and SEOmoz (both sites are very authentic in their respective domains) It’s the 4 day the website is up I don’t think website is not getting indexed in Google just because it contains 1 landing page and a thank you page! Any clue or help will be appreciated. www.setalks.com is the domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MoosaHemani0 -
How to make Google forget my pages ?
Hello all ! I've decided to delete many pages from my website wich had poor content. I've made a php 301 redirect from all these old pages to a unique page (not the home page, a deep page). My problem is that this modification has been made a week ago and my position in the SERPs have crashed down... What can I do ? I believe that I'll get up again when Google will see that these pages don't exist anymore but it could take a long time 😞 (these page are in the Google cache with a date older than my modification's date) I've read somewhere that I should put a link to the destination page (where old pages are 301 redirected) but I don't understand how it could help... Can someone help me ? Tell me what I've done wrong... These pages were very poor and I've deleted them in order to boost the global quality of my site... It should help me in the SERPs, not penalize me...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | B-CITY0 -
My website keywords have been almost completely taken out of indexing in Google since 04/26/11 and I cannot determine why, anyone know?
I had 12 to 15 1st page Google rankings in the iPhone, iPad, app review vertical. As of 04/26/11 I have lost all rankings, traffic has gone from 1,000 to 1,200 a day to 150 to 350 a day. I was using a plugin for auto press releases, but have removed this and deleted the urls. I also have changed themes and hosting over the last 3 weeks. I have been trying to get SEO help, but cannot seem to get anyone to help me. thank you Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crazymikesapps1