Was hit with panda in 2012, what to do now?
-
Hi Folks,
back in june 2012 when link building was the thing and I had no idea how to do it and hence outsourced link building. Company 1 would write a post and distribute it on multiple different domains after spinning it. Company 2, after company 1 was fired did directory submissions on PR0 websites for two months before i discontinued the service with them.
I still have the excel file of the links they built.
It goes without mentioning that the links were junk. When panda came about our website was hit. Back then i let it slide and we stopped link building and started doing things "white hat". Genuinely doing good things so to say. I never however did anything to fix the penalty.
Now i would like to look back at that issue and see if the penalties are still holding us back and if I can do anything to fix it.
Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter?
How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer?
What do you SEO mozters recommend?
-
Thanks for the mention Rebecca. I wanted to point out that link removal is likely not as important to Google when it comes to Penguin rather than a manual penalty. I wrote more about this here:
Also, the comments in your disavow file are not read by Google. The file is processed automatically so lines starting with "#" are just skipped. They're mostly for your own records. It's confusing because the documentation Google gives makes it look like you should be including info about whether or not you've tried to remove a link in your disavow file. But really, this is only information that is necessary in a reconsideration request which would be for a manual penalty.
-
These are all good questions, but tough ones to answer. I had a quick look at your backlinks and you've definitely got links that will be likely to affect you in the eyes of Penguin. If rankings dropped in May of 2012 that fits as there was a Penguin update then as well.
If Penguin is the culprit, then in order to escape, the following has to happen:
-
You have to do a really thorough cleanup of your links. I recommend removing links that are easy to remove and disavowing everything else on the domain level. The only sites that I have seen recover from Penguin are sites that have been VERY thorough with their disavow work.
-
Google has to recrawl your links to see that they are now removed or disavowed. This can take weeks and some links can take months to get recrawled.
-
You have to wait for a Penguin refresh to happen. At this point we have been waiting since last fall and Google says it will be a few more months yet.
-
You have to have a good site with decent good links. (It sounds like this is not an issue for you.)
I understand your frustration with SEO experts. The problem is that in the past, very little technical knowledge was needed in order to do SEO. Anyone could buy or build links that would work. But now, the pool of people who can effectively help a site rank is significantly smaller. And, anyone who does really good work is either quite booked or very expensive.
As far as link cleanup goes, I feel that there are some people who have a really good sense of what Google wants to see cleaned up, but there are others who do a horrible job. You definitely want to make sure you don't hire someone who relies mostly on an automated tool for link disavow as often those will flag good links and will miss a lot of bad links. If you are going to hire someone what I would recommend doing is asking for references and examples of sites which they have helped escape Penguin. Don't let them hide behind an NDA. If someone is good at doing Penguin work they'll definitely have a list of people willing to recommend them.
The other issue is whether there are other things holding you back. That's tough to answer without really digging in. A thorough site quality audit is never a bad idea. But, from what you've explained it certainly sounds like links are the first place where I would focus. I would want to get those links cleaned as soon as possible so that you have a chance to get them recrawled before Penguin rolls out again.
And finally...Go Jays Go!
-
-
First make sure what you're dealing with.
- Go into Google Analytics >> Acquisition >> Organic and find the week (or day, if you can) of the drop in organic traffic.
If you don't have GA, you can try something like Searchmetrics.
- Correlate to this:
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
- Look for recovery in organic traffic.
If you think Penguin is still impacting you, I'd recommend requesting removal. In my experience it's not very effective to seek the removal of links, but it's worth a try. If you don't think it's impacting you or still affecting you, just do good stuff going forward. In either case, submit a disavow on the bad links. Don't get caught up fixing things that aren't impacting your site.
If there is an organic impact, this is what I'd suggest.
-Start with a good form letter. Include the URL where the link is located, write up a professional, well-phrased request, and send it out. If there are a ton of sites, you might want to have someone who knows a good link from a bad link sort it for you and gather contact info.
-Send a follow-up to sites that don't respond.
-Submit the disavow and wait for an update.
You could hire someone to do link removal, but I don't think it's often a good way to spend money. Many of these sites are abandoned, and no one is reading the email.
If it's Panda after all, submit a new question and we'll talk
-
It's my understanding that Google generally wants to see some kind of good-faith effort at removal. When we submitted our own disavow file, it included notes about our contact attempts.
-
And also, How would you recommend we systematically appoach this issue to find the actual source as u piint out?
-
Thank you for the answer rebecca. I understand why google is requesting us to contact the webmaster first, but generally i doubt "freedirectoryseobest.com" and "articlemarketingforseo.com" are professionally enough set up for their webmasters to actually answer. Would google be upset if i just disavow the links without contacting the webmaster. that would save lots of time. what you think, Rebecca?
Mit freunlichen Gruessen nach Deutschland
-
Are you sure it was Panda that affected you? As far as we know, Panda really has very little to do with the quality of your backlinks and rather is about the overall quality of your website.
Were you hit around April 24, 2012? That's when Penguin first came out? But, it can be tricky, because there were Panda updates around the time too - April 19 and April 27.
Ah...but I just reread your question and you said that you started building links in June of 2012. There was also a Penguin update on October 5, 2012.
I've seen a lot of people who have gone on a crazy link pruning spree when really, if the issue truly is Panda, cleaning up your links is not going to help. If you've got spammy links, it's never a bad idea to clean them up. But, it sounds like the more pressing issue here is trying to figure out exactly what hit you. It's also possible that this has nothing to do with Panda or Penguin and actually is something else.
If you can pinpoint the date of your rankings drop, then let us know. That will help.
-
Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter?
- Never too late
How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer?
- Depends on your budget and time. Rebecca's suggestion is good to use a tool like Link Detox and contact every webmaster. If you got the time to do it yourself, go for it..otherwise if you got the budget, hire a freelancer but check everything.
What do you SEO mozters recommend?
- Rebecca's post summed it up
-
First, if bad links are the culprit, then the issue wasn't Panda so much as it was likely Penguin.
If you have the links in an Excel file, then you're off to a really good start. Run them through a utility like Link Detox to see which are truly bad (there may be some gems in there worth saving). Reach out to every webmaster and request the links be removed. Then build and submit a Disavow file through your Google Webmaster Console.
Also, read up on how to use the Disavow Tool. And anything else Marie Haynes writes about Penguin is bound to be gold, too.
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 Do You Know or Find Out if You've been hit by a Google Penalty?
Hi Moz Community, How do you find out if you have been hit with a Google Penalty? Thanks, Gary
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gdavey0 -
Hello i have been hit for external links
Hello my web has been hit for external links maybe because of the work of SEO consultants y had before. The web name is http://www.propdental.com Some seo consultants will try to use the disalow tools on webmaster tools other recomends to do another web with the content wich is very rich and start over again with a new domain I would like to know what is your opinion thank you very much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
How best to do Location Specific Pages for Eccomerce Post Panda Update..
Hi , We have an eCommerce site and currently we have a problem with duplicate content. We created Location specific landing pages for our product categories which initially did very well until the recent Google Panda update caused a big drop in ranking and traffic. example http://xxx.co.uk/rent/lawn-mower/London/100 http://.xxx.co.uk/rent/lawn-mower/Manchester/100 Much of the content on these location pages is the same or very similar apart from different H1 tag, title tag and in some cases slight variations on the on page content but given that these items can be hired from 200 locations it would take years to have unique content for every location for each category... We did this originally in April as we can't compete nationally but we found it was easier to compete locally ,hence the creation of the location pages and it did do well for us until now. My question is , since the last Google Panda update, our traffic has dropped 40% , and rankings have gone through the floor and we are stuck with this mess Should we get rid off (301 ) all of the location specific pages for each of the categories ot just keep say 10 locations per cities as the most popular ones and either do No follow no index the other locations or 301's or what would people recommend ? The only examples I can see on the internet that others do with multiple locations is to have a store finder type thing... but you cant' rank for the individual product /category doing it that way... If anyone has any advice or good examples of sites I could see that employ a good location url specific method, please let me know. thanks Sarah
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Impressions in Google SERP has declined from 3500 to 1600 after 5-25-2012\. Is it Penguin?
It's about the website http://www.apartments-houseboats-amsterdam.com/ The visitors had declined from 270 to 150 visitors per day. Is this caused by the Google update Penguin? If so what can I do to solve the problem? Thank you for your time and effort,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | letsbuilditnl0 -
Partner Site Hit with Penguin - Links hurt me
I work for a network of international websites, the site I work on is for Canada. Our partners in Australia were hit by penguin hard because they hired a black hat SEO guy and didn't know. He was creating profiles on highly authoritative sites and keyword stuffing them. Now, they've completely dropped off the SERP. This is where the issue occurs, because we are all international partners we are all linked together on the header of every page so visitors can choose their country. Now, because they were hit hard and we have reciprocal links (not for rankings but for usability) will we be affected? It seems like we have, but I just want some opinions out there. Also, should we go ahead and stop linking our sites between countries to avoid this mess?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0 -
Is my SEO strategy solid moving forward (post panda update) or am I doing risky things that might hurt my sites down the road?
Hey all, WIhen I first started doing SEO, I was encouraged by several supposed experts that it was a good idea to buy links from "respectable" sources and as well make use of SEO experimentation offered on Fiverr. I did that a lot for the clients I represented not knowing if this was going to hurt. But now after the latest Google shift, I am realizing that this was stupid and thus deserving of the ranking drops I have received. In the aftermath, I want to list out here what I am doing now to try to build better and stronger rankings for my sites using white hat techniques only... Below is a list of what I'm doing. Please let me know if any of these are bad choices and I will immediately dump them. Also, If i am not including some good options, please let me know that too. I am really embarrassed and humbled by this and could use whatever help you can offer. Thanks in advance for your help... What am I doing now? *Writing quality articles for external blogs with keyword links back to sites *Taking the above articles and spinning them at SEOLINKVINE to create several articles *Writing quality articles for every site's internal blog and using keywords to link out to other sites that are on different servers - All articles are original, varied and not duplicate content. *Writing quality, relevant articles and submitting them to places like Ezine *Signing clients up for Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, etc so they have a social presence *Working to fix mistakes with onsite issues (mirror sites, duplicate page titles, etc.) *Writing quality keyword-rich unique content on each page of each site *Submitting URL listings and descriptions to directories like JoeAnt, REALS and business.com (Any other good ones that people can recommend that give good link juice?) *Doing competitive research and going after highly authoritative links that our competitors have That is about it... HELP!!! Thanks again
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | creativeguy0 -
Are moz analytics now redundant ?
Whilst there have been quite a few q & a's and one or two posts on the blog about the google onslaught on "unnatural" links, with over 1 million sites impacted I'm surprised Moz hasn't said more about this. With google now muddying the waters even further about what is natural or not (with due respect to Moz, if you're not a brand like Moz, the vast majority of seo's buy some links one way or the other) with all the uncertainty, how is it now possible to trust any metrics about links ? In essence, does Domain Rank and Domain Trust now mean anything in the new google world and can they be relied upon ? No doubt someone will come back and say that a lot don't buy any links. Fair enough but the reality is that most do some kind of deals for links, writing in niches like law it is very difficult to get people to share content. Simply a fact. The Serps are in a mess. Google has replaced many decent sites who played the game to one degree or another, with a lot of sites that are worthless, not bothering with links or content,, so rising by default ! Directory sites seem to be doing better again, because, you guessed it, they are brands like yell.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | blocker04080 -
Has anyone been able to recover a site from that was slapped by panda?
I have a client that the only thing I can determine is over optimization of a couple anchor terms which the person no longer ranks for..I tried mixing up with brandname , brandname.com and a diversity of links but nothing seems to budge anyone have a similar problem?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | foreignhaus0