Penalized by Penguin 1.1 Release
-
I just realized that my blog, (www.onbetterterms.com) just recently got blacklisted. That blog actually redirects to www.springcoin.com/blog
On May 25th, Google released the Penguin 1.1 update. After looking at my rankings, I found out that all my keywords positions were dropped.
I have no idea why, and don't know how to fix this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
There is no signal of this website's (www.onbetterterms.com) getting penalized. But still this URL has been redirected to a different one. My advice, concentrate on your onpage optimization techniques, instead of running after and checking for page penalty. Stick to the natural ways of seo and promote your website through quality contents, maintain a keyword density of maximum 1%, things must be fine in the next two catches by Google Bot.
Don't mind but I feel that you have mentioned the URL ie. www.onbetterterms.com here, only to get some traffic to your website, which you have actually got. Nice trick..., but not good for the community.
-
Yes, those links were on the first page of OSE.
In order to properly diagnose your issue, a trained SEO would need to evaluate your website along with your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools account.
For the purposes of this Q&A, I will accept your diagnosis of a Penguin "penalty". The purpose of the Penguin algorithm update was to stop sites from manipulating their ranking based upon unnatural links. Taking a quick look at the links to your site, there seems to be at least some valid reasons for Google to believe your site engaged in manipulative linking.
Did anyone else own the domain before you? Are there others who helped you with the site? An SEO, developer or employee who may have built these links?
Either way, the links need to be cleaned up.
-
Hi Ryan,
First of all, I appreciate all your effort and input. Can't thank this community enough!
I have no idea on how those links were created. All our links were from personal finance blogs or mainstream media sites. I never bought links or hired anyone to do link building for us.
If you don't mind me asking, how were you able to find these links? Are you using open site explorer?
-
Kevin,
It seems your www.onbetterterms.com site has been redirected to another site. If you have a penalized site and redirect it to another site, you run the risk of penalizing the other site.
Regarding the onbetterterms.com site, do you have any idea how the following example links were created?
There are other links which appear manipulative like the ones above.
-
I never really went too deep into building links to the new SEO articles I wrote...I did a few internal links within my blog, but NEVER went crazy.. maybe just 1-2 at the most...
I never in my life bought any links
-
OK so you built links specifically to the landing page of your new content? Or to your home page?
Where did you get these links from? Did you buy them or build them?
-
Thanks Ryan, the reason i suggest Google Webmaster tool for extracting the link profile is because its a good point to start! then yes one can go deep in to links using other software...
-
About 3-4 Months ago, I focused heavily on doing a lot of keyword research analysis, and cherry picking keywords I could rank for using SEOmoz's tool.
I would say that I was moderately successful, but the funny thing is that literally almost EVERY SINGLE keyword that was ranked just fell off the earth. I always wrote unique content.
But some articles that weren't specifically targeted for SEO purposes maintained their rank (for the most part)
-
Thanks for your help. When I went here: http://onlinealley.com/seotools/googlebannedchecker/ I entered www.onbetterterms.com and it says it's been blacklisted. Is there another more legit website that you check?
So would you say the solution is to try and hunt down the domains with the anchor text of "debt eye" and kindly ask to remove it?
-
Thumbs up...
However, Im not sure the self-diagnosis is correct as the sites still rank for their domain name etc... I would like to see more information on the search terms which have dropped rankings.
-
I'm still trying to figure out why I exactly got penalized. It's a mystery that I don't seem to understand.
This article answers that question: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
At some point in time either you or someone working on your behalf built some bad links to your site. An example is: http://christianprotocol.com/bbs/view.php?id=cpiboard01&page=14&page_num=20&select_arrange=hit&desc=&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&keyword=&no=630&category=
The above link is one of many links you have from asian websites which are pages full of links related to viagra and other spam. Web pages like this one are not helpful to users. They have little reason to exist other then to manipulate search engine rankings. In short, placing links to your website on such pages violates Google's Guidelines. The Penguin update is designed to penalize websites which practice in such behaviors.
How to fix the issue? At a high level, it is a three step process:
1. Compile a complete list of all URLs linking to your website. Do not simply use the list from Google Webmaster Tools as that list generally only captures about half the links to your site.
2. Every site needs to be visited. A determination needs to be made if the link is "organic" (meaning it complies with Google's Guidelines) or "inorganic" which means it is a manipulative link.
3. The webmasters of each inorganic link need to be contacted with a request to remove the link.
The above solution assumes your self-diagnosis is correct.
-
Please can you clarify the situation?
Neither onbetterterms.com nor springcoin.com have been de-indexed or blacklisted.
Did you get a message in your webmasters account?
Looking at the anchor text backlink profile of onbetterterms.com specifically I can see why it looks very un-natural! You have 136 links coming from only 16 domains all with the same anchor text. This anchor text appears to have nothing to do with your domain name. See attached.
For some reason it uploaded the image three times but they are all the same image so ignore two of them... EDIT You also still rank number 1 in the UK for debt eye so I'm unsure where you have been penalized. Please can you clarify the situation so we can assist.
-
Kevin this could be the quality of links pointing to your website... if the quality of links is bad then it will eventually hurt your website as well... (happened with one of the client i have)
-
Kavin not to panic and planning a solid strategy is the real key to success…
If you are sure its Penguin… then get in to your link profile (best is to extract the link profile from Google Webmaster tool). Now when you have your link profile (may be in a csv) get in to it and figure out how many links are coming from your own network or network of websites… even more how many link pointing to your website that are already hit by penguin…
Clean your link profile and submit the reconsideration request to Google.
IT is good to build some good high authority links from different resources while removing links.
Removing links from 3<sup>rd</sup> party website is sometime difficult so in order to be successful one have to use every possible way to request the website to remove a link i.e phone, email and others.
-
HI David,
Thanks for the resources. I had a chance to look through the articles, but I'm still trying to figure out why I exactly got penalized. It's a mystery that I don't seem to understand.
In one of the articles, it mentioned that there could be "over-optimization" with anchor texts. I looked at some of my articles and I don't have many in-bound links with similar anchor texts.
I did, however, submit a request to Google to review it, but I'm not expecting anything out of it.
-
There are a number of helpful guides on this, instead of summarizing I'll point you int he right direction.
See:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/7-achievable-steps-for-great-seo-after-the-penguin-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
-
Subpages have Page Authority of 1 behind Home with DA 50
How come that our subpages all have a PA 1 if the home got DA 50? technical specialities: Megamenue opens on click only Category pages dont exist (home/i-do-not-exist-as-page-category/PA-1-subpage) All subpages have a high amount of links to ressources (over 200) what would be the most obvious cause for the low PA? would the external link profile be the main reason? thanks in advance. I would be happy to answer your questions Kind regards
Technical SEO | | brainfruit0 -
Do Com Junct links affect your site with Google and Penguin
We received the dreaded letter from google in reference to "unnatural or artificial links" Our site has affiliate programs through Commission Junction and Link Share and between the two programs we have over 8000 affiliates or advertisers. Our site has been very successful, but our organic search traffic is down as our rankings in the search engines have dropped. My question is do the affiliate links have an effect on our site with Panda or Penguin?
Technical SEO | | Statrak0 -
Google sees 2 home pages while I only have 1
How to solve the problem of google seeing both domain.com and domain.com/index.htm when I only have one file? Will the cannonical work? If so which? Or any other solutions for a novice? I learned from previous blogs that it needs to be done by hosting service, but Yahoo has no solution.
Technical SEO | | Kurtyj0 -
Why is Google showing sitelinks for 1 of our keywords, but not the other which is very similar?
For the term "Corazonas Foods" Google displays the sitelinks in the SERP listing. But for the term "Corazonas" it does not. The second term, Corazonas (our brand name), is not a generic term for anything so why wouldn't Google do the same for both terms?
Technical SEO | | getwilder20 -
Local SEO and Penguin
All, One of my client's sites was hit by Penguin. The business has lost almost all of its organic rankings but is still holding on for a handful of local searches for some of its satellite offices. We've built a new site and are slowly building domain authority. My question is this: at what point do I swap out the new site's location URL for the old URL in Google places? I don't want to risk the existing local placement which is all they have left for the time being. Thanks, John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
Google Penguin - Target Landing Page
Hello, One of our sites have been hit by the first penguin update back in April and ever since then we have been removing links and submitting reconsideration requests... It only seems to have affected our home page as some of our internal landing pages are still ranking OK in the SERPS #1 / #2. I'm just wondering if we created a landing page for this keyword and drove high quality / relevant links to this landing page could we get it to rank higher than our homepage even though our Homepage is on the 5th page.Hope the above make sense. Has anybody had any joy with this?
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
I have a penalized site and don't know what the cause is
I have a site which appears to have a Google indexation penalty. According to Google because its violating the T/Cs. Here are some background details about the site: The site is a online poker + deposit methods related site on a .co.uk TLD. It has 30+ uniquely written pages, and no advertising at the moment. In June of 2010, June 10 to be precisely, I bought this site from a fellow webmaster/affiliate. After the site 's ownership changed I tried accessing the server, but I couldn't log into it . I noticed that this host had serious problems and the IP was unreachable. After trying for some time the previous owner got me all the content in Word files and I created a new hosting account and re-launched the site on June 28. Between a couple of days after June 10 and June 28, the site was unreachable, and completely de-indexed from Google. When I re-launched the site, I used the default Wordpress Template Twenty Ten, and created new pages with the Word files I received from the previous owner. I waited a bit, but noticed the site didn't get re-indexed. So on August 18th I moved the content of domain xxx.com to yyy.co.uk/xxx/ and 301-ed all the former locations, hoping that this might help yyy.co.uk get indexed..... but nothing. On October 28 of 2010 I submitted my first reconsideration request, which was processed on November 17th without any change. At that time Google didn't say if anything was wrong like now, so I just waited... and waited... and waited some more. At some point I was ready to let this one go, as I didn't/don't see any problems with it. In fact, it used to be indexed before. By now, I removed all links pointing to it that I had control off, and there are hardly any left over. The site as well doesn't have any outgoing links left, so that can't be it either. I also removed a kind-a duplicate keyword heavy menu from the sidebar, as well as the widgets from the footer. Finally I also fixed a problem caused by Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugin, but I only installed this plugin recently, so that could not be the problem that caused the penalty. So after another reconsideration request Google again let me know this site still has issues, but I really have no clue which, or how to find out. I don't feel like doing any work on this site, as there is no guarantee that it will ever lose its penalty. What should I do now?
Technical SEO | | VisualSense0 -
Website has been penalized?
Hey guys, We have been link building and optimizing our website since the beginning of June 2010. Around August-September 2010, our site appeared on second page for the keywords we were targeting for around a week. They then dropped off the radar - although we could still see our website as #1 when searching for our company name, domain name, etc. So we figured we had been put into the 'google sandbox' sort of thing. That was fine, we dealt with that. Then in December 2010, we appeared on the first page for our keywords and maintained first page rankings, even moving up the top 10 for just over a month. On January 13th 2011, we disappeared from Google for all of the keywords we were targeting, we don't even come up in the top pages for company name search. Although we do come up when searching for our domain name in Google and we are being cached regularly. Before we dropped off the rankings in January, we did make some semi-major changes to our site, changing meta description, changing content around, adding a disclaimer to our pages with click tracking parameters (this is when SEOmoz prompted us that our disclaimer pages were duplicate content) so we added the disclaimer URL to our robots.txt so Google couldn't access it, we made the disclaimer an onclick link instead of href, we added nofollow to the link and also told Google to ignore these parameters in Google Webmaster Central. We have fixed the duplicate content side of things now, we have continued to link build and we have been adding content regularly. Do you think the duplicate content (for over 13,000 pages) could have triggered a loss in rankings? Or do you think it's something else? We index pages meta description and some subpages page titles and descriptions. We also fixed up HTML errors signaled in Google Webmaster Central and SEOmoz. The only other reason I think we could have been penalized, is due to having a link exchange script on our site, where people could add our link to their site and add theirs to ours, but we applied the nofollow attribute to those outbound links. Any information that will help me get our rankings back would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | bigtimeseo0