How can you tell if Google has already assessed a penalty against your site for spammy links?
-
Is there any way to tell for sure if there is a penalty? My client has a ton of low quality back links, and I think they are in danger of a Penguin penalty. Any way to know? The links are there for a business reason.... their clients mention them in the footer, with a backlink. It is not a link scheme. but folks are generally not clicking on a footer link, and so there is a pro/con of leaving it as it.
Any way, to diagnose whether a Penguin penalty has already hit?
-
You can check for a manual penalty by going to Webmaster Tools and then clicking on Search Traffic --> Manual Actions.
If there's no manual action though then there is no exact way to determine whether the Penguin algorithm is affecting the site.
Sometimes, you can see signs if you notice a ranking drop or a drop in organic traffic on the date of a Penguin refresh. But, if the site wasn't getting lots of traffic to start with then it's not always that obvious.
As to whether or not the footer links are causing a problem that's a tough call. If they're keyword anchored then they definitely need to be changed, removed or nofollowed. If they are url anchored then it's hard to say. If you want to look at it in a black and white way, ask yourself whether you would be comfortable showing the link profile to Matt Cutts. If you are hoping that he (or the webspam team) never sees the site then it really would be best to nofollow those links. Really, if they are there for the purpose of referral traffic and not to pass PageRank then nofollowing is best.
-
I would map the analytics data to the major algorithm changes and look for spikes, check out http://panguintool.barracuda-digital.co.uk/ If it's a manual penalty you will see it in webmaster tools, but for algorithmic you kind of have to guess if you are hit or what not and to what degree you were penalized.
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
-
Can assumptions be made for (not provided)?
With the (not provided) numbers growing to the inevitable 100%, can we make any assumptions about what the (not provided) visits includes without sifting through 5 software programs, Moz analytics, Google Analytics, Webmasters Tool, etc? It seems like a TON of time and work to "try" and get (not provided) data/keywords from all the articles and heads of the industries I've been reading. That amount of time and work are just not viable for a smaller SEO or single SEO working with smaller budgets, so my question, can we make an estimated guess based on visits for local businesses that most are branded keywords bringing traffic? Or am I way off here? Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts or how you handle (not provided) with your clients.
Reporting & Analytics | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Double click by Google - whats that all about?
Buongiorno from Latitude 53.92705600 Longitude -1.38481600... Ok ive watched the video, ive read the blog posts but what is Double click by Google? how do i get to use it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
http://doubleclickadvertisers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/digital-marketing-platform-to-win.html Is it a seperate service to Adwords? Questions questions... Any insights welcome 🙂0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments
Has anyone else found that Google Analytics Content Experiments seems to quite quickly favor the best performing variant in an experiment, and then show that variant many times more often than other/s - not split the traffic evenly? What is Google's thinking behind 'optimizing' during an experiment? It seems odd to me.
Reporting & Analytics | | David_ODonnell0 -
Is Google analytics not working properly anymore?
Hi mozzers, We launched a website 2 months ago and when monitoring Organic data on GA we had an average of 23% bounce rate like a month ago but the last 2 weeks I noticed that bounce rate=0%. This is very weird especially that we haven't modified the existing pages and that multiple keywords show an average site duration of 0 seconds. Any thoughts about this discrepancy? Do you think that there is an issue with the GATC implemented? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How to Track Google Local Places in Google Analytics?
I have read many articles on how to track google local places through google analytics. Each article I have read show a different way of setting up google analytics and using tags in google local places. Wondering if anyone as up to date information on this and what would be the best practice to track data from google local lisitngs in google analytics Thanks Arthur
Reporting & Analytics | | VivaArturo0 -
Getting traffic for another site
Hi Everyone, Our website url/brand is very close to another website url/brand. We are non-competing entities. It appears as though this other company has begun a marketing program which has resulted in our traffic skyrocketing. However, it seems to have also resulted in our Pages/Visit and Visit Duration to decrease and our Bounce Rate to increase. Can anyone suggest how to deal with this type of scenario? Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | AC_Pro
Robert0 -
Analytics package beside google analytics
Hi, What analytics package can i use to track ecommerce transaction besides gogole analytics that is free of charge? Thanks Arthur
Reporting & Analytics | | VivaArturo0 -
Site speed not being reported accurately?
We're constantly on the lookout for site speed, and Google's Webmaster tools are saying that we're really really slow (on the order of 5-15 seconds per page). But the site NEVER feels that slow, and lots of other tools say we're in the 3-5 second range. Further, we've implemented literally 100% of Google's suggestions, and all we have are ad units that now render using Googles Async ad loader, further reducing time to interactivity. Could Google be dinging us in search results for this? Here's an example page that they said loaded in 200+ seconds (!?!) http://hark.com/clips/kwkdqqtzsg-terran-nuclear-launch-detected Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | TheIronYuppie0