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?
-
If it's algorithmic then they just need to fix it fast, if it's manual... they still need to fix it fast and then do a reconsideration request.
I would guess that as long as you don't have other bad signals it won't really affect your site, but maybe remove the links temporarily just to be on the safe side.
SEL just did this, which may be of interest: http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463
Note that part where it states "In particular, pointing bad links at a good site with many other good signals seems to be like trying to infect it with a disease that it has antibodies to. The good stuff outweighs the bad."
-
Another good example of something Google didn't quite take into consideration with this update.
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
-
Link Building vs. Straight Earning Links Discussion
Hello, I'd like to start a discussion on link building outreach techniques vs. just building a good website with good 10X content. I don't like to receive unsolicited emails in my inbox, so why should the people in my industry? Also, I've seen plenty of evidence of 10X content soaring without link building outreach. But link building isn't dead of course, so can you tell me your personal experiences either way and the ethics of what you do? I especially want to hear if you've had luck with just building good websites and being successful based on the content itself, but an open discussion of either side is welcome. Leaning towards just building good websites and letting the Google algo do it's thing. Would love to hear your experiences either way. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW3 -
Does linking older posts help?
Asking a blogger to add an anchor text into their old post that relates to my niche. does that help with backlinks? does the quality of backlinks determine by how new the post is or the page rank determines all? for example a new post with lesser page rank vs a old post with higher page rank which one is better to put your link on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Do legitimately earned links from unrelated sites help or hurt?
We have a few charity events coming up that have offered to link back to our homepage. While we do genuinely like the charities we are going to sponsor, I'm not sure how those links will look seo-wise. For example, one is for the local high school basketball team and another is for a Pediatric Care Mud Run. To a human, these links make perfect sense, but to a robot, I'm not sure if it differentiates these links from spam/some negative link. Granted, I understand that a small percentage of links probably won't do anything either way, but I'd like to ignore that for the purposes of my question. All things being equal, do links such as these help or hurt? Thanks for your time and insight, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How do I prepare my store for Penguin 2.0?
Looking for advice from someone who has been keeping up on the updates from Matt Cutts, other sources on what to work on for my web store to prevent getting hit hard by the upcoming penguin update.Practical advice on what to clean up on the site would be extremely useful. Watched a Matt Cutts video yesterday getting a preview...I'm very curious about the part saying that Google will show preference to those who are "Experts in their Fields." What makes you qualified for this? We are in the wicker furniture industry and have been a local brick and mortar store since 1982. We started our website about 1998, so I would consider that experience possibly part of the equation. On the other hand, I know everyone would love to say they are the experts in their niche, so it would be nice to know what needs to be done to achieve this. Thank you in advance for any help, Mark Grabowski Wicker Paradise xQmQeKU25zg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
Hidden links in badges using javascript?
I have been looking at a strategy used by a division of Tripadvisor called Flipkey. They specialize in vacation home rentals and have been zooming up in the rankings over the past few months. One of the main off-page tactics that they have been using is providing a badge to property managers to display on their site which links back. The issue I have is that it seem to me that they are hiding a link which has keyword specific anchor text by using javascript. The site I'm looking at offers vacation rentals in Tamarindo (Costa Rica). http://www.mariasabatorentals.com/ Scroll down and you'll see a Reviews badge which shows reviews and a link back to the managers profile on Flipkey. **However, **when you look at the source code for the badge, this is what I see: Find Tamarindo Vacation Rentals on FlipKey Notice that there is a link for "tamarindo vacation rentals" in the code which only appears when JS is turned off in the browser. I am relatively new to SEO so to me this looks like a black hat tactic. But because this is Tripadvisor, I have to think that that I am wrong. Is this tactic allowed by Google since the anchor text is highly relevant to the content? And can they justify this on the basis that they are servicing users with JS turned off? I would love to hear from folks in the Moz community on this. Certainly I don't want to implement a similar strategy only to find out later that Google will view it as cloaking. Sure seems to be driving results for Flipkey! Thanks all. For the record, the Moz community is awesome. (Can't wait to start contributing once I actually know what I'm doing!)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mario330 -
How to recover my site from -50 penalty
One of my sites was hit after Google confirmed its panda 3.2 update. The site ranked very well for many heavy traffic keywords in my niche. But all of a sudden, 80% of the keywords which ranked high in the previous dropped 50 in SERP. I know it is a -50 penalty , but i do not know how to recover from it. The link building campaign is almost the same as before and all of the articles are unique. BTW, i have two image ads on the sidebar and 7 affiliate links on the bottom of the page. Any input will be great appreciated !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aoneshosesun0 -
What do Bing and Yahoo look for in a site?
Do Bing and Yahoo look for authoritative sites like google does? Do they punish sites for black hat or spamming? The reason I ask these questions is because one of my competitors was ranking in first place for many great keywords in Google, they have the highest authority out of all of their competitors. They must have been punished by Google because now they are not ranking for any great keywords in Google. However they are ranking 1st in Bing and Yahoo for most the top keywords, getting the the most visibility out of all the sites. I attached a small Graph with latest visibility for the sites with the top keywords from google and then I also included the company that was punished from google they are the green circles on the graph. dIVI4.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value
Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value. By this I mean, if you do have links from link farms and bad neighbourhoods, would it effectively pull you down in search engine rankings. Or is it more that it's just a waste of time to get these links, as it adds no value to your ranking. Are google saying avoid them because it will not have a positive effect, or avoid them becuase it will have a negative effect. I am under the opinion that it will not harm, but it will not help either. I think this because at the end of the day you are not 100% in control of your inbound links, any bad site could add you and if a competitor, god forbid, wanted to play some black hat games, couldn't they just add you to thousands of bad sites to pull your ranking down? Interested to hear your opinions on the matter, or any "facts" if they are out there.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esendex0