Recovering from Google Penguin/algorithm penalty?
-
Anyone think recovery is possible?
My site has been in Google limbo for the past 8 months to around a year or so. Like a lot of sites we had seo work done a while sgo and had tons of links that Google now looks down on.
I worked with an seo company for a few months now and they seem to agree Penguin is the likely culprit, we are on page 8-10 for keywords that we used to be on page 1 for. Our site is informative and has everything in tact.
We deleted whatever links possible and some sites are even hard to find contact information for and some sites want money, I paid a few a couple bucks in hopes maybe it could help the process.
Anyway we now have around 600 something domains on disavow file we out up in March-April, with around 100 or 200 added recently as well. If need be a new site could be an option as well but will wait and see if the site can improve on Google with a refresh.
Anyone think recovery is possible in a situation like this?
Thanks
-
Thanks. I'm hoping the next Penguin refresh shows improvement. The consensus seems to be that to recover from a Penguin penalty is a matter of the refresh happens to see any changes.
-
Yeah, on page seo wise I think we are good. My site blogs regularly about the niche area it's in and news related to it, also try to make it interesting, but yes seo wise I think it passes all the tests too - someone from Google's forums checked it out and thought it looked good seo wise as well as a online marketing company I just worked with that was trying to help my site out of any penalties. They also ran some checks on competitors websites and their online tactics, etc.
Some of the top rankings in our keyword is actually sites like Amazon and Office Depot - which might be a common trend now anyways.
For links the seo company did an analysis and I also added whatever I found that looked like shady directories or anchor text heavy links. I also checked out websites or ranks and if they came on Google's searches when typing their name. Anything questionable I disavowed as it seems now better safe than sorry with backlinks.
-
Thanks for those links. I'm gonna take a look through them. I also thought about being followed by the penalty I guess it makes sense since technically Google may notice a site from the same ip and google accounts being linked between a new and old site, etc. I guess basically if a penalty can be overcome that would be the ideal situation.
-
Hi King,
there is no direct "yes that's normal and easy to fix" as each case is different.
You also do not need to wait for the next run in order to start fixing a site from a penalty. There is a lot of litriture about Moz of recovery from penguin etc. if you do a search.
Not that I put much faith in it but there are also "link detox" software's that can help but be careful with them as its very easy to disavow good links etc. its only an algorithm after all.
Side-note: I thought there might of been a refresh/update end of last week as there was a lot of movement and John Mueller hinted its coming soon in a recent video.
thanks
-
You guys couldn't just give him the direct answer he's looking for?
OP, recovery from Penguin is possible, but you need to wait until the Penguin algorithm is run again. In 2012 and 2013 it was run multiple times, but it has not been run in 2014. It was last run in October 2013. So keep your fingers crossed for a refresh and hope it improves your rankings. If you've done as much as you could to remove links and done a proper disavow file, you should come out looking better.
-
Something to remember with Google and backlinks: changes take time, sometimes months.
Recovery is possible, and I am sorry you are feeling desperate in your situation. The fact is you are doing the right thing by looking into the links of your site and getting rid of any ugly linking domains.
Outside of links, have you compared your seo (on and off page) to the top ranking sites in your industry? A lot of people say that their website is informative and has well done seo, but usually that is because they are so close to their own site to see any errors. (can't see the forest for the trees) Informative doesn't necessarily mean well-optimized.
I would do a competitive analysis along with your link removals. What I would not do is sit back idly by while waiting for Google to put your changes into effect. Be proactive while you wait, and when they do come around and see you have made positive changes in all areas of your site you might get your old ranking back.
Question: what methods did you use to determine what links were bad or harmful?
-
Recovery is always possible. Remember starting a new site is hard and Google have paid it is possible for a penalty to follow you so might as well fix it now. You shouldn't ever have to pay for a link removal if you do just add it to your disavow list no problem.
There are loads of goodl resources on moz take a look through Q&A e.g
http://moz.com/community/q/google-panda-and-penguin-recovery
There are also some great blog posts too e.g
http://moz.com/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
Also a shout out to Marie Haynes (she has some great knowledge on the subject too!)
I know its depressing but keep at it there is a light at the end of the tunnel, one last bit of advice whilst you are removing links don't forget that you also need to replenish the link juice afterwards as you will have a dip so have a strategy ready.
Good luck
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
-
How long Google will take to Disavow a link?
Just want to know how long will Google take to Disavow a link? I uploaded my file on 18 Dec 2020 and today is 5th January 2021 and still, that link is appearing in my Search Console in Top linking domains. Anyone who recently done this practice and how long it took? I mentioned the domain name below and hopefully, it will disavow all the links [subdomain+www+without www] coming from that domain. domain:abcd.com Help me out, please...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seotoolsland.com0 -
Linking Websites/ Plagiarized Content Ranking Above Original Content
Hey friends! Sooo this article was originally published in December 2016: https://www.realwealthnetwork.com/learn/best-places-to-buy-rental-property-2017/ It has been consistently ranking in positions 2-3 for long tail keyword "best places to buy rental property 2017" (and related keywords) since January-ish. It's been getting about 2000-2,500 unique views per week, until last week when it completely dropped off the internet (it's now ranking 51+). We just did a site redesign and changed some URL structures, but I created a redirect, so I don't understand why that would affect our ranking so much. Plus all of our other top pages have held their rankings -- in fact, our top organic article actually moved up from position 3 to 2 for much more competitive keywords (1031 exchange). What's even weirder is when I copy the sections of my article & paste into Google with quotes, our websites doesn't show up anywhere. Other websites that have plagiarized my article (some have included links back to the article, and some haven't) are ranking, but mine is nowhere to be found. Here are some examples: https://www.dawgsinc.com/rental-property-the-best-places-to-buy-in-the-year-2017/ http://b2blabs.com/2017/08/rental-property-the-best-places-to-buy-in-the-year-2017/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-places-buy-rental-property-year-2017-missy-lawwill/?trk=mp-reader-card http://news.sys-con.com/node/4136506 Is it possible that Google thinks my article is newer than the copycat articles, because of the new URL, and now I'm being flagged as spam? Does it think these are spam websites we've created to link back to our own content? Also, clearly my article is higher quality than the ranking articles. Why are they showing up? I double checked the redirect. It's good. The page is indexed... Ahhh what is going on?! Thanks for your help in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jessica7110 -
New Domain Name or Keep going - Help not Recovering after Penguin
Hi Moz Friends I wonder if you can help me , a while ago we had a Penguin Penalty and lost our Rankings. After Months of work Disavow and Reconsiderations , Google sent me a message in Webmaster Tools to confirm the Penalty had been uplifted. Since then we havent recovered. I have been working with Bloggers to build relevant safe links, each having a DA of between 10-30. We have developed a Mobile Friendly Website and ios and Android Apps. We have improved Site Speed and moved to a Server within the same Country. We add lots of content and believe we have ticked all the boxes for onpage optimisation. However our DA and PA seems to have dropped slightly after Moz update today. We seem to be jumping in the serps, one day page 4 for "fancy dress" the next day nowhere to be found. I'm not sure what to do next. I'm not expecting to jump back to page 1 for the main keywords but some positive movement would be nice, especially as there are Lower DA Website, not mobile friendly or as fast above us in the serps. What I am looking for I guess is any ideas from you and also what you think about this idea A few people have mentioned that we might stand more of a chance using our domain name example.com instead of example.co.uk. example.com has never been used and is totaly clean (no penaltys ect..) Do we use example.com and move the website and content away from example.co.uk ? if so do we use redirects or would that just pass any hold thats on example.co.uk to the .com version Ideas Welcome Thanks Adam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AMG1000 -
Embedded links/badges
Hi there Just picking up on something Rand said in his blog analysing his predictions for 2014. Rand predicted that Google will publicly acknowledge algorithmic updates targeting...embeddable infographics/badges as manipulative linking practices While this hasn't exactly materialised yet, it has got me thinking. We have a fair few partners linking to us through an embedded badge. This was done to build the brand, but the positives here wouldn't be worth being penalised in search. Does anyone have any further evidence of websites penalised for doing this, or any views on whether removing those badges should be a priority for us? Many thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HireSpace0 -
I need de-spam help/advice
For one of my sites I am working on I outsourced SEO about 3 years ago. One of the "tricks" the SEO used at the time was to pay for several Blog posts to be "sponsored" by this web site using exact match keywords for the domain. 1 Where do I look to determine the spammy links pointing to this site? 2 Have you had success getting rid of these bad links?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kadesmith0 -
Why is this ranking first in Google Places for this term....?
"Best Bar In Chicago" - http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=best+bar+in+chicago They have only 5 Google reviews, and their local directory reviews are suspect. One of them goes to rateclubs.com and it's not even a page for their business, while one of them doesn't have user reviews, it's just an editorial review. The other one at superpages.com doesn't even link back to their site, it links to their restaurants.com profile. What is going on here? I've been trying to figure this out for a while as their first place ranking has been solidified for quite some time now. I can also tell you that a few of the bars listed below them have a MUCH higher profile and are better known. You can see that just by the reviews.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
750,000 pv/month due to webspam. What to do?
Let's say your user-generated content strategy is wildly successful, in a slightly twisted sense: webspammers fill it with online streaming sports teasers and the promise of "Weeds season 7 episode 11." As a result of hard SEO work done to build the profile of the domain, these webspam pages seem to rank well in Google, and deliver nearly 750k pageviews, and many many unique visitors, to the site every month. The ad-sales team loves the traffic boost. Overall traffic, uniques, and search numbers look rosy. What do you do? a) let it ride b) throw away roughly half your search traffic overnight by deleting all the spam and tightening the controls to prevent spammers from continuing to abuse the site There are middle-ground solutions, like using NOINDEX more liberally on UGC pages, but the end result is the same as option (b) even if it takes longer to get there.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mcglynn0 -
Will the links coming from an article in certain BLOG / NEWS SITE become a GOOD BackLink?
Such as, if i wrote a ymoz, and suddenly the articles is accepted, will the link to our site coming out of that Article Post increased our SEO Standing? Another example would be http://active.tutsplus.com , yesterday i have successfully pitched a tutorial idea, and they told me to write it so that they can published it , and they also promised that i will be able to put my site link (dofollow) ... But will these link be a Good BackLink that will increase our site's SEO Standing? The last one is exactly the same link , but this time coming from a News Site , such as http://teknologi.kompasiana.com/internet/2011/06/09/website-full-flash-dengan-inovasi-hebat-karya-indonesia/ , in this article (kompasiana is a very wellknown site news in Indonesia, in fact KOMPAS is the biggest newspaper firm in Indonesia) , our site is being featured , there is a link coming out of that article (DOFOLLOW), but will that link make our site much more SEO Friendly? Again please enlighten me 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IKT0