Penguin 2.0 has hit business
-
Howdy,
I represent a UK based workwear company called myworkwear.co.uk and our rankings have fallen following Penguin 2.0. We are a relatively small company compared to many competitors and have noticed the arrival of large companies in the serps. Many are not even in the workwear sector and pretty irrelevant which is annoying. We have not received any correspondence from Google, but our fall from grace particularly for the word workwear has been big.Do you think our link profile is an issue?
Click here: Link Profile
Is it worth emailing Google? We have attempted to remove bad links, is it worth using disavow? My feelings are we should:
1. Email Google via Disavow tool about the links we have already tried to remove with proof of attempt.Go through link profile with fine tooth comb and contact an even wider range of webmasters for link removal.Then email Google via disavow tool (best to try removal via email to websites first).2. Begin to build new content and links, even guest blogging is now coming under scrutiny from Google – There really is no bluffing Google anymore.3. Build site conversion.4. Develop a competition theme (10 years old anniversary) combined with say MyWorkHero, etc. Use this for social networking.5. Increase social networking, but is this experts are predicting this is the next kick up for seo.6. Having improved conversion, trial adwords.7. Continue to develop the site in a structured, non manipulative manner. – Look at it as a good site is a successful site in the eyes of Google and the rewards will follow.
Any help or advice would be much appreciated.
-
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the reply your time is much appreciated. I am aware of the edu.cn domains with drug products and emailed the relevant webmasters 6 months ago with no look as the site was hacked about 5 years ago. So I will now disavow them. Is it worth using disavow on other bad links before I attempt to get them removed? or does Google frown on this?
I agree about the term 'workwear' as over the years this built the rankings, but now the seo worm has turned. I have started to use prlog.org for press releases.Do you feel this is okay?
Once again, thanks for your help, it is important to provide independent opinions to clients.
-
Hi there
First of all, I'm really sorry to hear you've been affected by the update.
As Penguin was an algorithmic penalty, there will be no benefit in emailing Google directly or filing a reconsideration request, as the penalty was not manual. However, filing a disavow file would be worthwhile if you believe that your site's link profile is littered with spam.
Now, I don't mean to alarm you but I can see some very worrying links in your profile. You have a number of links from .edu.cn domains that look to be targeting pills and health items. In all honesty, at first glance it looks as though the site has been hacked - are you aware of this?
Having checked the site in the safe browsing tool, it doesn't look as though Google has detected this as hacked. Nevertheless, those links will be doing some pretty serious harm to your site and should be disavowed straight away. In addition, there does look to be a number of links with the keyword "workwear" that look quite artificial - as in, they only look to pass SEO value rather than user value. Those kind of links (which it looks like you've already identified) could be contributing to your penguin penalty.
It's worth noting that disavowing these links will likely have no effect until the algorithm refreshes, which may take a month or two. In the mean time, you should focus on replacing those links with quality links and looking to drive traffic to your site by other means. Also, in case you have been hacked, Google has released a great guide on what you should do next.
And I have to say, it looks as though you've got a great plan to do this. Steps 2 through 7 all look like great inbound marketing tactics (I particularly like 4) which in turn should help you earn high authority links.
I'd have a deep look at your link profile and also check your site security, but your recovery plan looks really solid and I hope it's not long until you get back on your feet.
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
-
Search traffic hit after switching magazine to subdomain
Hi there, I'm fairly new at all of this and would appreciate any help with understanding why our website has taken a hit in traffic. We curate an online magazine, which was previously accessible through: forensicoutreach.com. It was receiving about 2,000+ unique visitors per day up until a week ago, when we changed a few things. However, the magazine doesn't reflect what our business does, so we created a product-focused web presence on forensicoutreach.com, and moved the magazine (which everyone loved) to library.forensicoutreach.com (DA 37, PA 1). We thought separating the properties was a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. Our traffic on library.forensicoutreach.com is 1,500 (so 500 less than usual!) and our main property has about 56 unique visits a day. It's pretty substantial. A few questions: 1. If we move the library to forensicoutreach.com/library, will that make any difference? 2. Where did we go wrong here and how can we fix it? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | shivaniseos1 -
Newer iteration of Avinash Kaushik's Web 2.0
Greetings all! Does anyone know if there is a more recent, but comparable, book that covers the topic of analytics like Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity or Brian Clifton's Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, 2nd Edition? These were published in 2009 & 2010. I know the core concepts remain the same, but the technology has improved greatly.
Reporting & Analytics | | AfroSEO0 -
Yahoo and Bing Ranking Hits
Morning, Has anyone else in the UK seen a massive ranking shift on Bing and Yahoo over the last week? One of our eccommerce client's main keywords was ranking #3 and #11 on Bing and Yahoo respectively last week, but today they've dropped to #32 and #35. It seems rather strange as pretty much all of the main keywords have increased on Google. In fact, pretty much all of the Google rankings are the highest they've been since the SEO campaign commenced in October/November! Cheers, Lewis
Reporting & Analytics | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Hit by a penalty... but which one?!
Hi all, One of our sites has seen a huge drop in traffic beginning in January 2012 and continuing to this day. However, even after spending a great deal of time going through analytics I'm none of the wiser to what penalty has caused the drop in traffic (please see attached - grey line is minus one year). The problem is that our traffic is particularly seasonal, hence the difficulty in highlighting what algorithm update(s) has hit us. I'm tearing my hair out with this one, so any advice would be most appreciated! Cheers yxkTnTn
Reporting & Analytics | | dooberry0 -
Are Panda/Penguin Penalties not Global but only fired for specific Google CCTLDs?
An international portfolio of web sites has been suffering from Panda and Penguin over the last months. Essentially many of the international sites completely disappeared from the top 50 when before we had many Top 5 positions for competitive key words. Today we noticed that it appears that for all this time rankings for local keywords have not been affected for domains outside of the most relevant Google CCTLD for the page. To give an example: Domain.it / Keyword 1 (IT) = Italian Competitive Keyword Google.it: Keyword 1 (IT) April 2012 Position 4
Reporting & Analytics | | sp80
Google.it: Keyword 1 (IT) December 2012 Position --- Google.com: Keyword 1 (IT) April 2012 Position 1
Google.com: Keyword 1 (IT) December 2012 Position 1 Google.de: Keyword 1 (IT) April 2012 Position 3
Google.de: Keyword 1 (IT) December 2012 Position 4 Have other people observed such behavior? Does this give any pointers towards how the recovery strategies should be drafted? We have experienced that the more search volume a keywords has received the harder the Panda/Penguin impact. So one hypothesis could be that because the international Google domains do not receive overly significant traffic for the localized keywords Panda/Penguin protection algorithms are not being applied with the same force. Any thoughts are welcome. /Thomas1 -
Webmaster Tools shows 0 visits, Analytics shows 1000s?
Webmaster Tools reported a "Big traffic change for top URL" for one of our sites about three and a half weeks ago. WT traffic is 0 since that date. However, our analytics data shows no significant decline in traffic. The WT alert was received on Nov. 16. There was a significant dip in GA visits Nov. 22 but it recovered and I'm seeing no other indication that this is a penalty. What could be going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | IMM0 -
2 questions on avoiding issues with Google and while being right in it.
Hi SEOmoz community In fact I have two questions I would like to ask (with future SEO in mind). Do you consider a WordPress Multisite or various Single installs 'safer' for SEO? Theoretically, having various sites packed into one Multisite network seems like an ideal solution. However, is there a chance that once a site in the network encounters a little 'negative turbulence', that your other sites in the network might get impacted too due to the cross-referencing, linked account i.e. Webmaster Tools etc.? It would seem outrageous, but then again I wouldn't rule it out. Do I even have to go as far as setting up new Gmail, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts, so they (the sites) are technically not linked? You can see, I don't trust search engines one bit... Is there still a point posting articles once Google is having a hissy fit with your site? Basically I am currently going through a 'rankings and traffic drops storm'. It's not as bad as being de-indexed, but it's still having enough of an impact. In addition, Google does not seem to treat my new articles (unique content) with the same attention anymore i.e. does not seem to index them 'fully' or not at all (i.e. posting the headline in Google should return the article, but it doesn't). Is there even a point spending time now and posting new material or may it pick it up again once I am through this low phase? Does Google still index what it considers worth or is it a waste of time right now to keep posting, posting and posting more? Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.
Reporting & Analytics | | Hermski0 -
Glitch or Penguin?
Hi all, Our queries in GA have bombed, strangely since Penguin. We've gone from 12,000 impressions to none. Traffic is ok, we've not seen a decline. IS this a GA glitch or should we panic? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | brightonseorob0