Panda / Penguin Behavior ? Recovery?

[Force7]

Our site took a major fall on March 23rd, ie Panda 3.4 and then another smaller one on April 24th, ie Penguin.  I have posted a few times in here trying get help on what items to focus on. Been doing this for 13 years, white hat, never chased algos but of course learned as I went.

As soon as the fall hit one expert said it was links, which I kinda doubted because we never went after them but we have some but only a handful in comparison to really good authorative links.

I concentrated on cleaning up duplicate content due to tags in a blog that only had 7 posts (an add on section to the site) then focuses efforts on just going through and making content better. Had other overlapping content that I would guess would pass inspection but I cleaned it up.

After 6 weeks no movement back up, another expert here said yes, he saw some bad links so I should check it out. So back to focusing on links, I actually run a report and discover questionable links, and successfully get about 25 removed. Low numbers but we have only about 50 that were questionable. No contact info on the other directories so I guess we are stuck.

Here is where I just go in circles...

When our site fell on March 23rd we had 13 of our main pages still ranking at number 1 and 2 on each keyword phrase. Penguin hit and they fell about 10 spots.  EXCEPT, one... This one keyword phrase and page stayed on top and ranked at #1 throught he storm. (finally fell to #4 but still remains up there). The whole site is down 90%, we only have 3 fair keyword phrases really ranking out of 250.

The mystery is that the keyword phrase that was ranking was the one that supposedly had way over the % of anchor text, 7% of our links go to that page. The other pages that fell on Penguin had no pages linking back.

I have been adding blog posts to our site, I post one an in a few days it gets indexed, have one of those ranking at #2 for the keyword, moved up from #4 a week after posting it in the blog. (google searches shows 80K)

Just seems like the site should bounce back if new content is able to rank, why not the old?

Did other people hit by Panda and Penguin see a sitewide fall or are they still ranking for some terms?

I would love to see some discusson on success stories of bouncing back after Panda and Penguin. I see the WP success story but that was pretty sudden after it was brought to Google's attention.  Looking for that small business that fixed something and saw improvement.

Give me hope here please.

[Force7]

Thanks Egol!

[EGOL]

It sounds like you are paying very close attention to the consultants recommendations and applying common sense.  I usually don't recommend specific people but if I owned your site I would ask Ryan Kent to do a paid consultation.

He just authored a Youmoz post on link problems and has been helping people with Panda and Penguin problems. Your April 24th drop could be related to Penguin as mentioned in his article.

I don't know if he can help.  He is a busy person.  But you can ask him if you are interested.

[Force7]

Thanks for the input.

I agree completely but finding someone that knows what they are doing is the key.

Never claimed to be an SEO expert but know my way around. I have always believed content is king, never chased the algorithims but definitely watch the industry and what Google is doing. Of course I don't do this everyday so I agree with hiring an expert. I know the history and details better than anyone and can explain it to make the job of research much easier on the consultant.

I want to be the person the implements the changes. I just need expert advice on what to focus on. I never went after backlinks, just tried to create content they would want to link to. This is an area that I know I need to learn more about and freely admit it.

When this hit I had an SEO company go through my backlink report with me.  The problem is some of the links they claimed I should remove were the ones that were very good, and some on the do not remove list were bad. If a link directory has been deindexed.. that should be a sign our link should not be there, at least imho. He agreed when I pointed out the actual sites and did not just look at the numbers on the report.

A red flag went up when the consultant wanted to do some things that were a little questionable to help us recover. In talking futher he admited, yeah the things he wanted to implement were going to be a little grey hat. Needless to say I stopped there, I have always wanted to keep things white hat even though I know Black hat stuff does work.

I had hoped in the forums I could throw out some behaviors that were happening and see if I am on the right track.

So I am back to square one, trying to solve the mystery by myself when I need somone to actually look at the site and share some insights on what they think I should focus on.

I agree, hire someone but who is the question.

.

[EGOL]

Diagnosing panda and penguin problems on a site with a 13 year history and deciding what to do about them is really really difficult.

One of the dangers of asking in a forum is people tend to shoot from the hip with BS and partial knowledge and not enough time to..... study the site thoroughly,  ask you all of the necessary questions needed to understand the 13 year history of your site, write the book that is needed to educate you about the problem, and then give all of the advice needed to give you a shot at fixing your problem with no guarantees.

Expert advice requires the above.  That is why you see very little "expert" advice in forums for fixing panda and penguin problems.

In my opinion, the solution to your problem is going to involve detailed consulting and serious painful work on your part to get it solved.  You could be advised to do the near impossible work of cleaning a link profile or the heartbreaking work of dumping (or noindexing) reams of treasured content.

If this site is important to you I would recommend hiring a professional who fully understands panda / penguin problems, can spend the time needed to understand your site and has the guts to give you advice that will make you wince.