Penguin 2.1 Penalty- Can't Understand why hit by it?
-
Hi,
I have lost all my rankings after Penguin 2.1 update. I haven't did anything wrong. Want to know the root cause of the penalty so that I can overcome this.
Any help would be appreciated.
Website: http://tiny.cc/hfom4w
-
Where do you find the link profile?
-
Whilst over-optimisation is an issue, it is more about the quality of the websites you are getting links from than the anchor text used. You could have a brand link and if it's a poor quality website, you are going to get penalised. If you haven't disavowed any links, I'd make sure that 90% of them were disavowed.
You've also got duplicate content on your website so I'd say you've been hit by a Panda refresh as well as Penguin. Type in "To assist clients in getting value from their businesses, we provide Business Critical Software and IT services within various industry verticals." to Google and you will see 4 different versions of your content.
You need to do a full backlink analysis ASAP and be ruthless in the ones you get rid of, if you wouldn't show the link to Google then it's bad. Use the disavow tool in Webmaster Tools then file a reconsideration request to Google with details of what you have done and why there were so many bad links.
It's a long road to take but if you want the website to come back into the SERP's then you are going to have to do this.
Good luck!
-
Hi Yiannis and Remus
Thank you for the reply. There are many competitor websites like http://tiny[dot]cc/9tpm4w, http://tiny[dot]cc/dvpm4w that are just targeting "Software Development". Why aren't they getting penalized
-
Hello Chanpreet,
Like Yiannis says, it's probably related to "over optimized anchor text". To get more info you could compare your anchor text link profile with one for a competitor that still ranks well in SERP's.
-
Hello,
I had a quick look at your link profile and it seems that you had a big spike in link building activity from 17 of July up to 24th of August (mostly from directory submission). Then it goes quiet again which looks unnatural. You have used contextual anchor texts around "software development" keyword which covers pretty much 80% of your profile making your web site vulnerable to Penguin and my guess is that you got hit by the latest refresh/update.
I would suggest you make your anchor texts look more natural and remove all those directory links you got between july and august by using the disavow tool. Then monitor if you move up to SERPS and report back.
Remember that you might not move immediate results, sometimes the algorithm needs to refresh before you see any noticeable changes.
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
-
Why isn't a 301 redirect removing old style URLs from Google's index?
I have two questions:1 - We changed the URL structure of our site. Old URLs were in the format of kiwiforsale.com/used_fruit/yummy_kiwi. These URLs are 301 redirected to kiwiforsale.com/used-fruit/yummy-kiwi. We are getting duplicate content errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Why isn't the 301 redirect removing the old style URL out of Google's index?2 - I tried to remove the old style URL at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals, however I got the message that "We think the image or web page you're trying to remove hasn't been removed by the site owner. Before Google can remove it from our search results, the site owner needs to take down or update the content."Why are we getting this message? Doesn't the 301 redirect alert Google that the old style URL is toast and it's gone?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
1 business targetting multiple local locations
When researching a new client - I just came across a site in the same field which is ranking really well for all the local towns/cities/villages in the area. Each page for each town is a duplicate only changing out the town name (which appears 13 times on the page) - all pics and videos are the same. His url structure is along the lines of: budget-business-domain.com/budget-business-area/budget-business-town/ The domain was registered in 2012 - all backlinks are internal - anchor text is the same. I think it shouldn't be working.... but it is 😞 Why is this working?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | agua0 -
Partial Match Penalty Site - Move Portion & Redirect To New Site
So I have a site that currently has a partial match penalty from google, I have been working to get it removed...Bad SEO basically my site was submitted to a bunch of bad blog networks..Hopefully it gets lifted soon as we remove and disavow links. That said I was planning on moving a portion of my site to a new site since its not really the focus of the site anymore however still pays the bills. I have also have been building it more of a network of sites..So If I do that and 301 redirect the pages I moved, will the penalty carry? On the current site I planned on using Rel no follow to any links that I may change in the header/menus etc.. Some of these pages I believe have the penalty while others dont. I really just dont want to screw anything else up more then it is? My biggest fear is that its perceived as a blackhat method or something like that? Any thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dueces0 -
Goddady's Domain Masking and 301's
I have a client who's 7 domains and single website (instantpages®) exists within the clutches of GoDaddy. They own 6 kewyord rich domain names that 301 redirect with masking to the main branded domain. In effect, what this provides is the ability to add a title tag and meta description for a keyword rich domain name that displays content through an iframe. So really it's not duplicate content but this practice sets off my spidey sense that this is not a best practice regarding SEO. I want to suggest for the client to drop the idea of masking and do a straight 301 redirect to main branded domain. I'm sure that is fine but these domains are Not similar variations but actually vary widely: massage-city.com, city-massage.com, city-acupuncture.com, acupuncture-city.com, city-chiropractic.com, chiropractic-city.com etc ---- Doesn't Google frown on redirecting 6 domains to a single domain if they vary widely? Words of wisdom appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | superZj0 -
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 -
Is it outside of Google's search quality guidelines to use rel=author on the homepage?
I have recently seen a few competitors using rel=author to markup their homepage. I don't want to follow suit if it is outside of Google's search quality guidelines. But I've seen very little on this topic, so any advice would be helpful. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smilingbunny0 -
Interesting case of IP-wide Google Penalty, what is the most likely cause?
Dear SEOMOZ Community, Our portfolio of around 15 internationalized web pages has received a significant, as it seems IP-wide, Google penalty starting November 2010 and have yet to recover from it. We have undergone many measure to lift the penalty including reconsideration requests wo/ luck and am now hoping the SEOMoz community can give us some further tips. We are very interested in the community's help and judgement what else we can try to uplift the penalty. As quick background information, The sites in question offers sports results data and is translated for several languages. Each market, equals language, has its own tld domain using the central keyword, e.g. <keyword_spanish>.es <keyword_german>.de <keyword_us>.com</keyword_us></keyword_german></keyword_spanish> The content is highly targeted around the market, which means there are no duplicate content pages across the domains, all copy is translated, content reprioritized etc. however the core results content in the body of the pages obviously needs to stay to 80% the same A SEO agency of ours has been using semi-automated LinkBuilding tools in mid of 2010 to acquire link partnerships There are some promotional one-way links to sports-betting and casino positioned on the page The external linking structure of the pages is very keyword and main-page focused, i.e. 90% of the external links link to the front page with one particular keyword All sites have a strong domain authority and have been running under the same owner for over 5 years As mentioned, we have experienced dramatic ranking losses across all our properties starting in November 2010. The applied penalties are indisputable given that rankings dropped for the main keywords in local Google search engines from position 3 to position 350 after the sites have been ranked in the top 10 for over 5 years. A screenshot of the ranking history for one particular domain is attached. The same behavior can be observed across domains. Our questions are: Is there something like an IP specific Google penalty that can apply to web properties across an IP or can we assume Google just picked all pages registered at Google Webmaster? What is the most likely cause for our penalty given the background information? Given the drops started already in November 2010 we doubt that the Panda updates had any correlation t this issue? What are the best ways to resolve our issues at this point? We have significant history data available such as tracking records etc. Our actions so far were reducing external links, on page links, and C-class internal links Are there any other factors/metrics we should look at to help troubleshooting the penalties? After all this time wo/ resolution, should we be moving on two new domains and forwarding all content as 301s to the new pages? Are the things we need to try first? Any help is greatly appreciated. SEOMoz rocks. /T cxK29.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tomypro0 -
Influence of users' comments on a page (on-page SEO)
Do you think when Google crawls your page, it "monitors" comments updates to use this as a ranking factor? If Google is looking for social signs, looking for comments updates might be a social sign as well (ok a lot easier to manipulate, but still social). thx
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gt30