Penguin Strategy Idea

[Berner]

Hello,

So while I sit and wait for Penguin to hopefully ease up on my site, would it be smart to create a new site and then forward the old penguin hit site to it after the dust clears and any issues are better?

I have heard some people say you never recover from an algo penalty? While others say to wait it out.

So just curious what you think? Would you ditch a site that is not super followed or popular? in the attempt to create a site with no bad backlinks and start fresh?

Thank you for your thoughts

[MarieHaynes]

Sorry I didn't respond sooner Gary. I really appreciate getting a recommendation from you.  I guess what I was disagreeing with was the idea that starting over was what John always recommends.  I possibly misinterpreted your response though.

I have seen a couple of sites make fantastic recoveries from Penguin, but it's definitely not common.  The majority of Penguin hit sites that I have seen are in the same boat as you where they appear to have done all of the right things but are still waiting for improvement.  Very frustrating indeed.

[Berner]

Wow Gary great posts thank you.

so going forward, would it be smart to change my citationa to show my new domain? Or leave it in case the original site comes back?

And create new citations for the new domain?

[gazzerman1]

"I'm going to disagree with Gary" Disagree with what? At no point did I say it was not possible to recover, I have in many post before cited that John Mueller has always said EVERY site is recoverable. Here is a link to one of those statements by John (View Question 4)

http://www.reconsiderationrequests.net/google-hangouts/12-April-2013.php?#Q4

I said "You will almost always have some suppression if you are unable to remove bad links." This Is a FACT!

It IS possible to split an arrow in half with another arrow from 100 yards but its near impossible. It is all in the wording with John and Matt, just because something is possible does not make it near impossible. I have done extensive testing on this as have you considering you have a business in this field. What is a FACT is that even if you recover you will almost always have some suppression from bad links even if you RANK #1 you could still be suffering from suppression that would give you a bigger gap between 1st and 2nd.

Recovery WILL take a very long time in most cases. The question is how long and how much time and money are you willing to invest in making this happen. The money invested can also be calculated in the loss of revenue you have every day until you do recover not just the money spent trying to fix the issue.

The cost spiral out of control when you take 6 months for example as a recovery time.

Here are the facts!

I have also had an answer on a similar topic about one great site is better than 10 semi ok sites.

1 site is better according to Google and done correctly will do great, however! Currently in many niches most of the top 10 have suppression or even a penalty and are still ranking top 10 because the whole industry is pulling dirty seo tricks. This has lead to many companies owning multiple sites as backups and because they are clean domains they are ranking up top for them. Google is unable to deal with this problem even when I report them direct to John Mueller. I know sites that have 4 sites in the top 10 listings. They make the whois private and have different contact details for each business and even if you call them they answer in the name of the domain using a simple phone number screening system.

For the last 10 years it has been more advantageous to do the things Google says do not do because you will spend all your time chasing the top 5 which will rotate and change like the wind as the churn and burn sites dominate most SME niches.Should you focus on one domain, YES because trying to do more is a real pain and putting your focus into one will yield better results. Can you protect yourself from future penalties? If you happen to make a mistake then you have no backup and you are back to square one. This is why most SME's have a backup domain or two because of the risk factor a totally ridiculous situation that Google has created because of long recovery times.

I also thought about going with an EMD as so many sites I see have he keywords in the name, so I figured to try that route too.

Another ridiculous situation, there are many issues with EMD, Google on multiple occasions have said the EMD's are bad at some point there will be a big slap on them I am sure! And all your hard work will be flushed down the toilet at the click a of button.HOWEVER! They are taking all the top rankings right now in most niches (excluding the major ones). Another reason why the churn and burn spammer community are winning again.The stumbling block Google hit last year when trying to slap these sites was that a few companies in Florida I believe said "HEY, we have been in business before the internet and called ourselves lawyers of Miami" or something like that. Matt Cutts was uable to argue the case that they did not do it because of SEO, lol and the algo was changed very very quickly.So the answer is, if you are going to use an EMD beware that you are in the firing line for a penalty in the near future. One of the main reasons is that if you want people to link to you using your company name you will basically be getting keyword rich links to your site and the Penguin Algo is looking for exactly that!Your best option is to start a fresh domain, use one of your keywords matched with a unique brand word so that you get some benefit of a keyword without being an EMD. Write new content and see how you rank.You could even keep the old domain up and remove the contact details from that site is there is no issues with the same address and keep working on it in the hope someday you will manage to recover it.

I don't like the answer I have to give you to your questions, but I have been online since 1993 and have been in the website building/SEO/SEM game since about 1997. I have seen it all, I have seen every lie, every bend of the truth and tested almost every example of what we have seen up to this date.Just because something is said as fact does not make it feasible choice. One last example of that was Google said negative SEO was not possible. They then changed their statement six months later to say it was possible but in extreme circumstances.

The real fact of the matter is it IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE. The ONLY time where it is possible is when the domain does not have a single link in it's profile previous to the incident that could be considered spammy, which in itself is almost impossible.Its all in the wording. Sorry to be a downer but its better to give hard truths than false hopes. There are few stories of recovery because they require to much time/money/work when compared with starting a new domain.

If you want a good shot at recovering Marie Haynes is and expert in the field and has tremendous experience, if you stand any hope of recovering it is with her.I hope your decision proves to be the right one now that you are armed with lots of knowledge

[MarieHaynes]

"My issue is though if you try and add in say a company name and phone number, will Google say "Hey this may be a different domain name and content, but the contact info is the same?'"

This is something I'm not completely sure on.  What you may want to do is start a new question so that you can get the attention of people who do local SEO.  You can reference this question in your new one.

"I had a local seo here in Colorado tell me that all a disavow does is tattle tells on you to Google. So basically you are telling Google to penalize you."

There are a lot of things that we don't know about the disavow tool.  A lot of people have a fear that using it could be dangerous to you.  I do not believe that filing a disavow is going to make Google take a stronger look at your site or penalize you further.  Also, if you have a link based issue such as either a manual penalty or problems with the Penguin algorithm IMO it is not possible to remove that issue without using the disavow tool.  The only exception would be if you controlled every single unnatural link linking to you and could remove them.

[Berner]

Thank you so much Marie,

You are very smart and I appreciate your time to answer my question.

If I may ask - With trying to test the waters with an additional domain, I have no problems writing new content. My issue is though if you try and add in say a company name and phone number, will Google say "Hey this may be a different domain name and content, but the contact info is the same?'

I have also had an answer on a similar topic about one great site is better than 10 semi ok sites.

My goal is just to be found. I made the mistake of hiring some seo from Digital Point, and now I am paying the price for black hat seo.

That being said, I do LOVE my domain as it is my business name, BUT I had a local seo here in Colorado tell me that all a disavow does is tattle tells on you to Google. So basically you are telling Google to penalize you. Of course they wanted $3000 for a new site and then $1500 a month to do seo on it. So maybe its just a money thing.

I also thought about going with an EMD as so many sites I see have he keywords in the name, so I figured to try that route too.

Either way I feel like I am on an Island by myself. I want to join civilization once again. I have cleaned up many links, got citations, and have a 44% bounce rate. But not listed in like the first 12 pages of google for my target keyword. So its lonely. I am lost on who to trust, so I turn to you and all of the great Mozzers

Thank you again

[MarieHaynes]

I think the answer depends on a number of things.  In some cases it doesn't make sense to start over because businesses may have a lot invested in the branding of the domain name.

I'm going to disagree with Gary.  I've seen John Mueller say quite the opposite and tell people that any site can recover from any algorithm change provided you do the right work.  Ultimately the answer in my opinion depends on how many good links the current site has.  If ALL of your rankings were based on links that are now unnatural and you're not married to your domain name then yes, I would start over.

Recovering from Penguin is definitely possible.  I wrote about some of my experiences with seeing sites recover (or in some cases, not recover) from both Penguin issues and manual penalties here on Moz: http://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase.  I've seen sites recover completely from Penguin, but only if they've got a fantastic site that has the ability to attract links naturally.

If you do start over, make sure you don't use the exact same content as Google will often figure out that the original site is the canonical version and will attribute the old links to the new site.  Also, I'm not sure that I would redirect the old site to the new unless you can confidently tell that the old site escaped Penguin.  Otherwise, if you didn't get all of your unnatural backlinks you could end up redirecting Penguin issues back to the new site.

[Berner]

Thank you Gary

i do not have any manual penalties, yet even with new links, citations, and disavowing bad links I do not show up under my states simple niche

So now I am looking going towards a fresh start

what hurts is I do like my domain as it is my business name. But when I am not being found, I am not good.

So without paying 2500 a month for help, I feel like I need to do something

[gazzerman1]

John Mueller from Google Says Yes, ditch the old site and start a fresh one.

You will almost always have some suppression if you are unable to remove bad links.

Better to start a fresh site and have no lingering issues.

301 redirecting a site with a bad backlink profile to yours with almost identical site structure will pass those bad link issues on to your new domain even if you no longer have manual penalty issues. Almost all sites have a Penguin suppression these days. Some are unnoticeable as their good links far outweigh their bad links.